LeoG

The FCC must be wrong

I am assuming he means you aren't getting more actual "watts" from gain which is true. That's why it's called "Effective" Radiated Power and not True Radiated Power.

Gain does not increase power would be correct. Gain does increase where the power goes. Zero gain is an antenna that radiates equally in a 360º sphere. Most antennas don't do that. An "Omni directional" antenna is really a lie, but in a good way. It still radiates in a horizontal circle (approx) but the beam of energy radiating from the antenna is cut off on the top and bottom so that power is all included in a beam that is 20 or 30 or whatever degrees in the vertical thereby increasing the effective power in that area. You aren't wasting it going straight up or down. It is being put to better use in the horizontal plane that it will be received in "effectively" giving you the result of more radiated watts. Gain doesn't multiply your radiated power, it directs it to a more useful area. Better?

I am running 50' of RG8/U coax right now. It's all I have until the good stuff gets here probably today. And I've heard that low power can make it harder for the meter to do it's job properly. HT says 4-4.5 watts and the repeater says 6.4 watts. Both falling into that low power category.

I have the Retevis MA-09 antenna and so far the SWR has been 1.01 on both my HT and RT97S at both frequencies 462 and 467Mhz GMRS bands. Not exactly sure how they accomplish this but I've checked on many of my HT's and the repeater in several different antenna placements.

Well that's a reasonable explanation. I'm going to see if I can get an extra 10' mast attached to the existing mast and get more height out of it on the roof. Maybe I'll get 35-37' off the ground.

Well that was disappointing. I went over to the shop and put the antenna on a makeshift mast, a 16' board and raised it up on the same bollard and now I can't get reception from the repeater from the same areas near my home. I'm sure the metal building right next to the antenna has something to do with it LOL The angle of the building does allow the signal to get to my house. Surprising it worked better nearly on the ground. Coax should be coming tomorrow. Maybe I'll get it up on the mast.

Flat lander.... Pretty hilly around here. Thanks.

Well color me impressed. I did a very jerry rig on the Retevis MA-09 antenna just for receiving even thought I did transmit a bit. My 1st try was with my mobile antenna on the roof 26' off the ground. It made it 1.3 miles before it quit. The 2nd try with the new antenna only 3' off the ground I was able to make it about 100' before my house 2 miles. Only because the house is on a hill. And it's only about 15' down from the top of the hill. I was able to hit the repeater with the TD-H3 (4 watts) with the OEM antenna which isn't that great. So I'm still using the RG58/U (50') so effective radiating power is about 11.8 watts which is a far cry from the LMR400 that will be on the system when I set it up for real, 24.5 EFP and the antenna will be 30+ feet off the ground.

I have a clothes line pole in my backyard. The coax might be a killer. Have to look up flagpole pricing. The shop height is 26' to the top of the roof and I have 4-5' above that for now.

That's a nice calculator. You have to do it in 2 steps to figure it out. Since my actual cable isn't listed, RG58/U, I used the Belden 8240. Using that cable gave me an effective output of 11.8 watts vs 24.5 with the LMR. Quite the difference. Thanks for the calculator.

That thing is up there. Not sure if I could get away with that. It's not my building, just a lifetime renter. And I don't think I'd want it up that high at the house. I can dream though, can't I?

Maybe this would help https://www.noisemeters.com/apps/db-calculator/

Right now what was sent to me is RG8/U with the kit I got and I'm waiting on my LMR400 before I actually put the antenna in the air on a semi permanent basis. I have two spots it might go 2 miles from each other. Want to find which one will work best for me. I guess the antenna gain is almost eliminated by the RG8 coax run.

That sound pretty nice. So 50w transmitter, 50' LMR400 antenna with a gain of 9?

According to Retevis I have the MA-09 antenna https://www.retevis.com/ma09-high-gain-gmrs-omni-directional-base-antenna-us

I found this calculator searching around the internet. The only thing is minimum baseline is LMR-400 cable. I was hoping it would go down to RG58 so you could make comparisons. https://www.antennas.ca/calc_ERP.htm My little system with 6.4 watts out, 50' LMR400 to an antenna with 7.2dBi of gain radiates and ERP of 24.5 watts.

I got the antenna today that was included in the repeater kit I bought. I have no idea what model number it is. It is a fiberglass version. I did pose the question to Retevis about the model number. I did some limited testing with it. I used a squeeze clamp and attached it to one of the boxes on my truck. SWR was nearly perfect at 1.01. I was able to put 6.4 watts into the antenna from my repeater. I took a walk about and got about 5000 ft from the house. Felt like more . I needed to go one more block to get to 1.3 miles which was where my other test with my mobile antenna dropped out. I have all confidence that it would have made it. But the situation was much different. The antenna wasn't 30 feet in the air like the mobile antenna was. It was 6' off the ground and the 1st thing it had to contend with is a house wrapped in aluminum siding and then a small hill. Much better antenna, obviously. So soon I'll put it on the shop and see what happens. If I'm not happy it'll go on the house so I can have the strong signal in my neighborhood.

I've been pretty happy with the Tidradio TD-H3. Range is fully dependent on terrain and height. I hit a repeater 7.5 miles away through not ideal conditions. I'm receiving a repeater from 21 miles away and I can connect but haven't tried to communicate through it.

I've just got the RT97S myself and downloaded the software. The password function can be used or not. I guess they added a safe guard to the software to prevent unauthorized programming. Basically just ignore it by leaving it blank.

Here is the building I placed the antenna on, the circle showing the position. This picture is from a while ago when I installed the cell phone antenna. This is the mobile antenna I put up there. The plan is to put the antenna on the mast at the top. I have a foot of mast that I didn't use and plan on pushing it up while lowering the cell antenna about the same amount. When the repeater was operational I did interference tests on the cell phone signal and saw nothing.

Well I did an experiment. I'm still waiting on the base antenna to come, probably tomorrow. I put the mobile antenna up on the top of the metal building which is about 26' off the ground which is at 162' ground elevation. Lots of trees everywhere. Be pretty tough to get above them without going up 75' or more. Had a small issue with the repeater. It changed its PL tone. I had it on 100hz and I couldn't connect. I used a different channel that I programmed and it worked. SWR of about 1.3 and 6.04 watts out with the setup. Turns out it flipped to 67hz. When I read it with the program, it said 100hz but wouldn't connect. I rewrote it and it was back to 100hz. I started heading home (east), which is 2 miles by road and probably pretty close as the crow flies (1.9m). I got as far as 1.3 miles and no more hookup. Mind you I'm in my truck using a handheld with the OEM antenna inside the truck. Came back up on the next road over (south then west) and it hooked back up pretty much at the same road I lost it at, 1.35 miles. So I got up past the shop and headed north and got 2.2 miles when it quit. Went around those roads and it never hooked up again til I got 1.4 miles away pretty much at the same road that goes east west. So it's a puny little 19" antenna with no gain. On the wrong side of the building it looks like. IF I decide to put the bigger antenna on the shop I'm not sure if it'll reach the house because of the hills and trees. The antenna is about 5' tall so it's not that hard to put up and take down. It's easier to do it at the shop than my house.

Since I need a place to store all this stuff I put it into a box. Harbor Freight to the rescue and got one of their Apache boxes. Really wanted the orange... But figured this would be much better to keep it out of view instead of screaming here I am. Storage/camping/bug out box, call it what you will - it keeps things organized.

Well there are some people who can only think in big, commercial ways. If you are putting up a repeater it has to be on a 60' pole up on top of some mountain. And while I'd love to do that I'm not in mountainous territory and I don't really want to spend lots of money putting up that type of equipment for something that may end up just being a dead end hobby. I got the 2 talkies for my birthday. I asked for them. Normally I ask for tools for my woodshop and my family kinda frowns on that because they think I work too much (I do). So this time around I decided to just get something that I can play with and tinker around. I'm not trying to be this big community member and solve everyones repeater problems. I'm doing it so I can communicate with my family and friends and just have something different to do that doesn't involve wood working.

Mostly just screwing around. There is no repeater in my local area and it's not like it's a lot of money to put out to have some fun. Hoping I can convince some of my friends and neighbors to join in on the fun. It's kinda hilly over here and I live by the river so I'm already in a low spot. I'd like to be able to communicate with the wife from the shop which is about 2 miles away and then with my buddy in his wood shop which is 2 miles away in the opposite direction and he will be about 10' above sea level. I know all about the restrictions of line of sight which is part of the challenge to overcome in my area. It's more of a toy for me at this point. And at anytime when I finally get my antenna up if I find the repeater doesn't work out I can put in a 50w base station.