Ian

The colocation fee and lease is more or less similar to the data center environment you're used to. I'm in the same boat, as a newbie wanting a repeater, but that much I got out of a buddy who's building a repeater.

No! Now all I need is for Garmin to build a mobile GMRS/satnav combination, or to roll one myself.

At some level, this is a "Why can't we have nice things?" question. (What nice things, you may ask? These nice things.) But how hard would it be to find out who's using 452 and 472 MHz frequencies? Assigning them to GMRS, even on a secondary basis, gives us access to all-eight-channel-at-a-time, all-solid-state, no-oscilloscope-required repeaters. I believe the semiconductor filters used here could be improved to do 5 MHz splits, but that is clearly beyond the current state of the art (though military tech may be capable of it, they have priority access to whatever spectrum they require to do their jobs, so alternately it may simply have never been developed, though their budgets are quite up to the R&D task involved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic_filter I think that the Elliptic filter is the best approach to building solid-state GMRS repeaters. Chebyshev and Butterworth filters have better ripple characteristics, but Elliptic filters offer the sharpest cutoff available, and if the location of the ripple can be controlled adequately, a circuit board with reliable, repeatable and temperature-insensitive performance could be a duplexer. If Butterworth filters are capable of acceptable performance, however… A circuit board with reliable, repeatable and temperature-insensitive performance could be a duplexer for every channel, simultaneously. I've also looked into surface acoustic wave filters, which are doing the black magic in LTE base stations. They're almost certainly capable of the 5 MHz splits we need, but they also cost like black magic ought. A more compact repeater may be achievable, but a more affordable one? Not so much. So, I ask you, the brain trust -- what's easier, the bureaucratic burden of finding an underutilized slice of spectrum at least 10 MHz away from our little chunk of the UHF, or the engineering burden of figuring out if this XXXXXXXX is possible, and then making it a product?

They're marketed as "interference eliminator codes" in honest marketing. They offer no privacy, only solitude. If you want privacy, you want encryption and or FHSS… both are illegal in GMRS, but available in 900 MHz unlicensed radios that can do up to 1 watt. Motorola markets them heavily for business use, as the licensing requirement is … well, "no requirement" is very easy to comply with. They don't encrypt, but they do do FHSS, which makes them pretty low-probability-of-intercept.

Has the Rino protocol been reverse-engineered yet?

My reading - and I am neither doctor nor lawyer, and this does not constitute medical or legal advice, or the practice of medicine or law - of the FCC rules leads me to believe that only the exciter is the regulated component, so long as the rest of the mess doesn't cause it to radiate beyond your permissions. So I guess have one more vote for no problemo so long as you keep it on channels 15-22, and especially keep it out of the interstitials.

All good points. Leaning towards MotoTalk as my cross-band solution, 'cause it's as license-free as FRS and so much less congested. However, I'm backing off on the mobile repeater for the time being, and I'll figure something else out. Probably going to double down on the garage repeater; with a little luck I'll find a used Kenwood TKR840 or Ritron Responder in acceptable condition to tide me over until I can get to the advanced stuff.

Both truly excellent ideas! I'll be hitting them up on Twitter and mentioning it in any relevant Facebook groups I can find… Signal amplification for the win!

Thank you, padre!

My condolences.

http://www.dovesandserpents.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/facepalm.jpg Edit: Holy crap, the Midland is TWICE THE PRICE!!! D: Edit: I'm morbidly curious to see if the LT-590 programming software would work on the Midland…

Hey, we can see individual repeaters' coverage circles on the map. Is it possible, or at least reasonably feasible, to map all the repeaters' coverage circles simultaneously? Especially if some can be disabled (as a couple repeaters in the database seem to be down for the count, and a few others seem to be down for repair or upgrades, according to email exchanges I've had). Penny for your thoughts?

Hans, I'm going to slyly take what you're doing here and run with it. Let's rationalize the entire Personal Radio Service. MURS becomes part of FRS. They're both allowed two watts, business use, and no repeaters, yes? GMRS gains the ability to listen to repeater inputs (a blindingly obvious solution, in hindsight, from my ham radio study guide) and … let's call it eight 50 watt VHF channels. Half will be repeater inputs, half will be repeater outputs. Preferentially taken from the color-dot pool, since the market has matured, and business radios aren't sold with all of the available channels programmed in any more. Yeah, actually, that'd be perfect. In the mean time, Uniden (may) have me covered. Quarterwave: The hardware's the problem. What do you think about starting up group-buys on Massdrop for legal-but-unprofitable custom kit like better wireless mics? If anything I said here would be done, merging FRS and MURS would be the golden ticket. It'd reduce the number of boxes I carry every day.

I'm rocking the midland micromobile mxt105 - simplex only, but I'm quite fond of it. I was thinking about rolling an all-Midland repeater, but then I remembered that they don't have anything cheap (actually, they don't have anything AT ALL) that can listen on the repeater inputs. Tangent: why does the mxt400 have a data terminal on the front panel, which the manual says isn't used?

I did hundreds of hours of reading before asking for help. The most important result of that reading was finding out what was possible, and how out of my depth I was. The second most important result was to become angry and confused, as I realized that it's basically not possible to use new-production radios on GMRS beyond two watts, or with repeaters, with a few important (but non-overlapping) exceptions. I explored going business band, but I'm not entitled to buy a business license without using the radios to earn a profit, or at least performing activities tangential to or in support of it. I started off with cell phones, but holes in their coverage usually lead to me being screamed at. A social solution is impossible, so a technical solution, no matter how difficult or expensive, must be pursued. I explored ISM radios, but the TriSquare eXRS - my first choice - is long discontinued and absent from the secondary market. I tried MotoTALK, but it doesn't have the range to cover my entire block, and is therefore not fit for purpose. I saw Motorola's DLR series, but they're a NXDN derived system, and are technically only incompatible with MotoTALK due to deliberate changes to the FHSS hopping order, in order to impose market segmentation; like MotoTALK, they're limited to one watt, and by the propagation characteristics of 900 MHz. Even before the cell phones, I bought some early FRS radios, nice single-channel Radio Shack units, but the audio quality was unacceptable. Allegedly. (I blame reluctance from the neophobe who yells at me.) I bought some more FRS radios, and they failed within a week. (Motorola Talkabout T4300, to name-n-shame) I bought those last ones for some volunteer work, and the returns process took the entire period they would have been useful. Bought a bunch of Motorola Spirit MURS radios, which were the first really useful things I laid hands on, and I love them. But good luck finding a mobile MURS radio…. There was one certified under 95J for rally-car communication, but it was $600 new and it's been discontinued in favor of an intra-car intercom without a transceiver. I went back to the ISM band with the EnGenius cordless SN-920 cordless phone system from the pawn shop, which does one watt of 900 MHz, full duplex, with some attempt at encryption and FHSS. The system had been out of production for a decade, new batteries are not a thing, and their customer service told me to buy a new system. The Durafon 1x goes for about $550 on Amazon with one handset, but the base that supports their good handsets is $1200, and each handset is $500-550. Not happening soon. I'm running out of subparts now, and I've failed miserably at getting anyone else I know to get a ham license, citing either not-giving-a-shit, or in one case, the toxic community of fudds, and in another case "that's great I'll do it" turned into "I never said that. What's ham radio, anyway?" I have given myself panic attacks trying to read and understand case law and parse the federal register. I am now confident that the real motivation is to destroy the personal radio services so that the frequency can be leased to the highest bidder (but let's be honest, probably Verizon). Meanwhile, in Australia, home of the UHF-CB, repeater capable hardware is more-or-less Walmart grade and fairly cheap. Wireless microphones and headsets are not exotic. UHF use (for "UHF" is all you have to say to express that you're talking about unlicensed personal radios) is relatively mainstream, and they have 80 channels to our 22 (though a few are blocked off for future inventions). I find it profoundly frustrating and unfair - though I recognize nothing about the universe is intrinsically fair - that there is nothing really fitting into the niche of "prosumer" gear in the United States other than used gear of questionable reliability. (Which is to say I've had poor experiences with used radios' reliability, and new radios as well! Until my recent GMRS buying spree, I was at like one-for-seventeen UHF radios still working. I've joked that "this is where UHF gear comes to die" with serious justification.) TL;DR: I'm tired, frustrated, and anxious about this. I've done my homework, and I'm sick of owning inevitable failures. I want some successes to be proud of, dammit! I'm also aware that I wrote four pages of refutation to the accusation of "instant gratification" and that's not normal, but you discovered one of the psychological land mines I wasn't aware I had. I'm sorry this came out pointed in your general direction, but I simply can't bring myself to delete it now. May it instead illustrate some of the things I've tried that brought me to this place in my attempt to create elegant technical solutions to problems.

Breaking this out for tl;dr -

Oh, crap. I'll be doing this the manual way for the foreseeable future, then. Thank you! That's definitely the solution I'm leaning towards, if the $100 crystal-controlled Ebay special (it includes a tuned duplexer, sometimes!) doesn't happen to me soon. I'll probably use Midland -- wait. They can't listen to repeater inputs. I'll probably find the cheapest receiver I can, since unless contradicted, the best information I've found yet says that only the exciter has to be 95 certified. (Read as a component of the transmitter, when used with an amplifier, or the whole transmitter, when used without.) And no, it doesn't have to be pre-made. I'm sorry if I gave that impression, as I'm well aware that borders on impossibility. I just really want all the components to be replaceable on short notice if something goes belly-up on me. It should only take a few mW from inside the car. If this was Australia, I'd just get a Uniden UHF-CB, and the first party wireless mics, but they aren't even trying to make that available in the US, even though it's explicitly legal. Wait, that's not true - they're only making them available with connectors for three high-dollar CB radios. Cross-band repeat would be simplest, but we __do__ have the option in GMRS, as I realized last night just before bed. MotoTALK does about 0.7 watts of 900 MHz FHSS in the ISM band there, so with a custom cable and turning on vox on both the GMRS transmitter and the cellphone I'm using as a base for the "wireless mic", I really could have a cop-a-like system. Having said that, and with requests for more clarity in my needs, my "minimum viable product" is: I want a garage repeater that'll cover the neighborhood and those stores I use the most 'cause they're closest. I'm leaning towards using an Ed Fong J-pole attached to the chimney as a my antenna, and a cheap Chinese duplexer tuned so I can change channels on the repeater without visiting a radio dealer. The first enhancement to this minimum viable product shall be a battery backup, for I live in Florida. Understood and I apologize - I really muddied the waters by not clearly breaking this up into more sane chunks. IE, garage repeater, car repeater, fun projects to add later. Only thing I'm worried about is the ready availability of repair parts, thus the requirement that all components are still in production, though I suppose a sufficiently large supply of old stock might soothe my nerves.

And the wind is taken out of my sails. :| In the mean time, anyone got any ideas about how to get a radio to use a callsign as a Roger beep, using either fast Morse or ASCII? Neither sounds particularly rough to listen to...

Corey, I want a beginner's repeater that can grow with me as I go from trying to manage in big box marts with no cell coverage, to dealing with those shit weeks when hurricanes take down the everything. Mostly the goal of mobile repeaters is going to be a repeater pretending to be a mobile, with a few mW of input -- if I can find gear like that. If not, I'm looking at other options, but they price is just unbelievably unaffordable. Hans, wireless mics are better for really short ranges between the user and the radio, but you can't be arsed to find a wired mic. Repeaters are better for when you're at least a block away or more from the repeater and you still want to use your big 'ol transmitter.

For a couple hundred bucks, I can get a crystal-controlled repeater and an amplifier to bring it up to fifty-ish watts. Yes I do want champagne on a beer budget. But I think you miss my point. Mobile repeaters won't be talking to another fixed repeater. They'll be more or less pretending to be powerful simplex radios with wireless microphones. I'm still trying to figure out how to make the linked repeater thing work, legally, so I need to ignore the whole thing and figure out how to make it work without networking. However, if I can figure out how to make repeater networking work, then the cost of the X10 gear will justify itself, as I'll be able to bill myself as a consultant and build other people's radio networks as my day job.

Price leaks suggest that X10 is $688 a piece. Four base stations is a minimum, five or six preferred. Ideally 1-2 handsets per minimum. This is so far outside the realm of affordable I shouldn't have to tell you…

Because I want a mobile radio, with remote speaker-mics. Australia's UHF-CB market has easy access to them, but only a couple Uniden HF CBs in America can use them. There are options, but they all suck. Wireless Microphones Lupax HM-888 Rebadged Zoxn ZX-777 Illegal AF Technically sweet ZOXN ZX-777 Illegal AF Technically sweet X10DR Spendy as fuck Technically sweet Probably the best option UNIDEN MK800W For UHF-CB+ DECT + Uses 8p8c connector, easily interfaced Uniden Bearcat BC906W Like the MK800W, uses DECT. Proprietary 6-pin connectorOnly compatible with four Uniden Bearcat radios Motorola RLN6551 & RLN6544 Barely worth mentioning Super speedyProprietary AFNot compatible with any civilian radiosBluetooth Hytera SM27W1 https://www.hytera-mobilfunk.com/en/product/details/sm27w1-wireless-remote-speaker-microphone/ Uses ADA-01 adapter for compatibility with old radios

As for mobile repeaters, here's something pretty spot on for what I want in each of my family's cars. Problem is, it's only ten watts, and the split on the repeater is a minimum of 10 MHz.

Oh, sweet! Can you link to that? Boy, if you think this is bad, you should see my selection of legal, repeater-capable handhelds… Ah, the doctrine of "forensically identical". XD I really want a radio that lets you record your callsign in fast Morse mode as your Roger beep…

http://www.nsea.com/Linking.pdf Per the guy holding the oldest active GMRS callsign, an analysis of the rules of repeater linking. WRAF213, I was about to tell you that you were probably wrong, but per the definitions provided by Cornell, I'm now inclined to think that "causing a station to begin transmitting" is specifically permitted by definitions, but they also say that you're not allowed to link in §95.127. This is definitely a hot mess, and trying to figure out what's legal gives me anxiety attacks.