LeoG

Interesting. So at least I'm not alone. I've sent several emails to them and the last couple have been ignored. So like you I'm not exactly impressed. As for the antenna I can say it produces a great SWR over a broad range of frequencies. So they are employing some sort of "circuitry" system to do that I'm betting. When I apply a DC current using my ohm meter it acts strangely. Like some resistors/impedance and capacitors are in the system. I just checked their RG58/u cable and it seems above standard for loss. But it's still RG58 and lossy. When I was screwing around I switched the "machine" from 400 to 450-520 and I couldn't get any power out of the repeater for a while. Hmmm.... I wonder if I had to power it down after the change. Because I did do that but I don't remember if that when things came back to life. But when it did come back to life it was only 1.5 watts out. Very strange and very inconsistent.

So 7.89 watts out of my repeater through 50' LMR400 is 5.78 watts into the antenna. Nice to be able to figure that out.

Little bit better than spec-ed. I'm using a higher frequency so the loss would be slightly more than shown in the table.

Anyone know how to calculate the dB loss with those numbers And yes, I'd like to see the math.

I just did a real world test of some RG58/U cable. Why? Because that's what I have kicking around unused LOL. Using my little TD-H3 radio at 467.625MHz going into a 50ohm dummy load through my Mcbazel Surecom SW-102 SWR/Power meter. The 1st connection is an SMA-F to PL259F and then a PL259M-M, 1 ft RG58 jumper cable to the meter. The output on the meter was 4.69 watts I then switched out the RG58 jumper cable for 50' of RG58/U cable (Retevis) and checked the output and it was 1.48 watts. Pretty significant.

That is definitely a problem with almost any popular repeater, linked or not. I listen to a repeater in Holyoke and there is one guy who definitely likes to hear himself talk. And getting in otherwise for the other members of the repeater has been a challenge at times. If he is conversing with someone else they have no space between keying so the repeater is jammed continuously with no one being able to get in or talk to someone else without keying over them. I can't image a large widespread system being held up by two chatty kathy's because they think it's a telephone.

Well it's designated as family radio. The whole world is my family isn't probably something the FCC is going to say.

So what about a wireless connection to each other? I know 3 repeaters in NY that are connected by wireless means to each other so they act as one. Not sure I should mention which they are... I can talk to Niagra Falls from Utica.

Well if you go back to this post, at the bottom of the post you can see what I am dealing with for terrain. And it ain't no mountain top. I wanted to use the shop because it's up 100 feet more than my house is. And I still have a line of trees near my house. But I'm not surrounded like I am at the shop. Never really realized how much forest I had around me til I started this project and then looked at google maps to see what was going on.

So on Tuesday I brought the repeater home with me. I have it set up in my truck with the Nagoya UT-72G mobile antenna, the squelch of the repeater is at 1. I had given a friend one of my HTs and he lives 3120 feet from my house. We were able to talk simplex from the HTs without any issues. There is a large building and some trees in the way, some of the distance is over a river. I'm probably 40 ft higher up than he is. Then I walked about 1000 ft farther, 4190 ft and reception was still clear. I then went in front of lots of buildings, houses, trees etc as I went from one block to another. Transmission got worse but still legible enough. As soon as I got to the next block the road gave me a clear shot to him and the reception was 90% quieting. So the next morning I put the truck with the repeater up the hill to the highest spot near my house and we tried to chat through the repeater. I could activate it but he couldn't. We could talk simplex with the HTs. I went up to the truck and used the repeaters microphone and he could hear me. But he couldn't activate the repeater. I set up the codes before I gave him the radio so I knew it worked already. When I got about 600-700 feet from the repeater even I was having a hard time getting it to work right. Then I used the mobile antenna attached to the HT and was able to talk with him without issue. Pretty much proved to me that something is wrong with the reception of the repeater. Now come today. I brought the repeater back to the shop and started to play with the programming. Tried a bunch of stuff and took many trips to see how far it would go. Still only getting about 1/4 mile before I can't trigger the repeater. And then I decided to try something. I had asked Retevis what the Embedded Programming was on the edit tab of the programming software. They told me it was for putting a note into the machine. Recently I had put my initials and the date I received the repeater. I decided to erase this and leave it blank. Well low and behold that got me back to where I was originally. Almost to my house and still able to trigger the repeater. I tried putting the words back into the embedded programming and it screwed it up again. I tried changing the machine function from 400M-520M to 450M-520M and that was a mistake. Now the repeater had zero output. I had this happen before but it was just random. I don't know what I did, but screwed around a lot and then I was able to get 1.5 watts out, weird. Took a while and I was able to get it to do 5.3 watts out. And then played more and more putting random things into the embedded programming and finally got it back to 7.8 watts out. I've got to tell Retevis that the embedded programming affects the wattage output of the repeater. I still think the repeater is very quirky and inconsistent. So tonight I set up the repeater in the truck and put it up in the same spot and I was able to walk out about 9/10ths a mile up the road with 2 radios and was able to connect to the repeater and had good modulation and quieting up to about 3/4 mile. At 9/10ths it was still ok modulation but quieting was about 20-30%. And I still had to walk home LOL. So I think I got it back in operation and I believe the whole problem was the misinformation Retevis gave me about the Embedded Programming. You can't use that to put text into the machine as far as I can see, it screws with the repeater receiver. I never had issues with the transmitter. So now I'm going to have to play raise the antenna higher to see if I can get more distance out of it. 1.5 miles is just unsatisfactory.

Oh. I don't blame you. I thought you might have paid for it with your own monies. I haven't killed mine off yet. I got it back to where it was before it started acting weird. OK, here is a question for you that can't do any harm. On the bottom right of the software panel after you read the RT97S it gives a frequency range. Does yours say UHF(400M-520M) or UHF(450M-520M)? I put mine in 450-520 and it started saying 1.5 watts out. Then I screwed around some more and got 5.3 watts. Then I put it back to 400-520 and played for a while and got it back up to 7.8 watts. Just bizzare.

Hey Randy. Wonder if you could do something for me. It has to do with the Embedded Message. It's found under the Edit tab in the RT97 programming software. I asked Retevis about this and they said it was just a place to put a notation. So I put my initials in the top line and the date I put it into action in the second line. Unbeknownst to me that was the start of some issues. I didn't realize it but this is when my problems with the receiving range of the repeater started. I thought it was because of the rain because that's when I discovered it, right after the rain. But I also programmed the Embedded Message with my initials and date. It seemed to act like it was on squelch of 10. When I started to fool around with it more trying to solve my problem I finally reprogrammed the whole thing. Using the 450-500M band. I did that and now I got no power out. Kept playing and finally got it to transmit but now it was doing 5.3 watts. It's always done 7.8 watts into my antenna. I went back into the Embedded message and erased everything on both lines and then I was back up to 7.8 watts. Originally there was some gibberish in both lines. Maybe you want to copy and paste that somewhere so you can put it back. Wanted to see if you would dare to go into the Embedded Message and erase everything to see if yours also went up to 7.8 watts. Just make sure to record what the output is before and then after. As long as there is nothing in both of those lines it seems to work. Put anything in either line and my goes on super squelch and you can only get about 1/4 mile away before it'll receive anything. Whadda you think? Wanna give it a go?

I play solar all the time. I have a system in my truck I use to power tools and if needed I can power my house. Depending on what you can keep the temperature of the battery at when you put it into a hole you might consider a LiFePO4 battery. They also have self heating batteries that will make sure the battery will stay warm enough to allow charging. Not sure if you are limited by size of funds but if I were to do this I would use a 50 or 100Ah battery with a Victron 10 or 15 Amp controller and a 100 watt solar panel. Or possible a pair of 50s in parallel to try to avoid shadows from killing power output. One of the main issues with a LiFePO4 battery is it's low temperature charging. Usually 32ºF is the low limit, which is why I suggested a self heating. It will deliver power until the temp gets to -4ºF but won't charge until 32ºF. Or you could stick with the AGM battery, but make it much larger so it can hold more power so it doesn't get to a low enough discharge that it stops producing power for the repeater.

That was actually a question I had and forgot to ask. Glad someone else asked it. I have about 8 family members I have handed out HTs to in case a SHTF event. Programmed them all to a couple of high power repeaters that are in range but using HTs to them is sort of a push because they are 17 and 21 miles away. The work but modulation strength is weak. Usually I'm the one initiating things so I'm the guy pushing the call sign.

Love how they say "Yes, people still use these"

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Maybe they still exist. Lots of my radio knowledge comes from that era and before.

That's one way to do it. But it has a mic and it'd be nice to still be able to use it. I'm not always gonna have the radio on me (blaspheme ) , the mic is always there. And yes, I can remove the IDer and plug the mic back in....

Maybe you can mention to the company that it might be nice to have a way to have the IDer and the microphone on at the same time. Or a cable that can accommodate that.

If I can ever get my repeater working properly I'll be getting one of those whether I need it or not. My fars are being very limited.

Awwwwww... No rock, paper, scissors.

The only reason for me not to play with the internals is the warranty. If it was out of warranty I'd be in there like nothing. And I do agree that it's unlikely that the duplexer has slipped. And what I mean by that is one of the adjusting screws got loose during shipping and has been slowly moving taking the duplexer out of tune and bringing the receive/transmit ratio out of whack. This repeater shouldn't be able to output 8.5 watts from the duplexer. And the wattage shouldn't have increased since I tested it at the beginning. I've double checked with a couple of HT which I marked their output wattage on the inside of the battery compartment when I got them, and they are the same as before. Tells me the power meter is still working right.

OK, played some games. Went home and gave the wife an HT. Came back to the shop and used the microphone on the repeater to transmit out. I was able to get to her, barely. Probably 5% quieting but she could understand what I said. Now I'm wondering... if the duplexer has slipped. When I got the repeater I did a dummy load test on it and it was 6.4 watts, same thing on the antenna +/-. Now it's saying 8.5 watts into the dummy load and 7.8 watts into the antenna. With the tiny duplexer this thing has there's no way it's doing 85% pass through into the dummy load. That's why it says it's a 10 watt transmitter with 5 watts out from the duplexer. And so I'm getting more wattage out but my reception is very limited (?). It's still set on Squelch of 1 but I'm not able to receive the HTs from anywhere near as far as I was before, nearly to my house. Now I can only activate the repeater about 1/4 mile away from it using an HT. It's a real befuddler.

Measured the cable with no antenna and it's a total open, which it should be. Ya, I think it's gonna have to come down. Maybe I'll email Retevis and see what they have to say about how their antenna might react to a dc ohm test and other such related questions. Because after doing the 1.5 mile test with the HTs, I don't think this has been working right since the beginning.

It essentially doesn't work. I can get 1/4 mile out. I can get a mile and a half with the HTs with 4" antennas going through a forest and a highway embankment. So I think their just might be a slight problem.....LOL