ASRM

I just put up a system recently at my homestead, I went with 1/2 inch hardline/heliax for a 50 foot run, N connectors, used a Comet 172EFC (I think that's the model number) just to get up and going, only 6DBd and just 40 foot up on a mast mounted on the eave of a dormer, the hardline with connectors ran me around $200-250, antenna was cheap at around $110 from Antenna Farm (I would suggest a more professional antenna though and new you are looking at $600 to $1000 for a decent antenna, I went low cost to get on the air, looking at a used AS or Phelps Dodge and tearing apart and repairing if needed for a much more long term prospect, local radio shop has a garage full of commercial duty 9-12DBi antennas they took down years ago
 
I did invest in a Vertex 7000 repeater with duplexer, set me back around $750 tuned and delivered. So you might be able to get by at around your price point minus the antenna.
 
Others will tell you, don't skimp on antenna (like I did) and antenna feed. Buy once, cry once as they say.
 
I am getting 10-15 miles mobile (40 watt units with 3DB mag mounts), half that on portable with lots of ridges in my way, some spots I am doing 30+ miles mobile and 20 portable. I sit on the top of a valley over looking the metro area (about 200 feet up about 5 miles away) and do get some shadows from gullies and dips as well as some big buildings in my way. Still usable for my needs. And FUN!
 
Kudos on putting up a repeater

I sure wouldn't want mine living under my roof.

I like the idea, but the problem is with the bootleggers that snag onto a repeater, the unlicensed users that don't know radio protocol or a host of other reasons.
 
Do we want a 911 dispatcher monitoring the rag chewer?
 
Having a mutual aid type channel would be a great idea. I know from experience though it's a pretty tough sell.
 
We have a UHF repeater that  30-40 miles at almost full quiet for the sheriff department, I personally have tested it in our county for a couple months, along with the deputies for coverage. It is a near  "perfect" system (I am placing my Part 90 Repeater at the same height and power) and yet we can't get the county to sign off on it and make it official for a mutual aid system. All the departments in the county are on UHF, all have discussed a need to reachout to county and other agencies, ISPERN doesn't allow certain comms that the MA channel would provide.
 
If someone does initiate such a program, I would be VERY interested in how they got it approved.

I sure wouldn't want mine living under my roof.

I sure wouldn't want mine living under my roof.

Can't be stressed enough, I know some feel a repeater is there for the using, myself and our shop feel differently. Ask, I may or may not give permission, we tend to allow other repeater operators as a sharing basis, we all have some skin in the game. I have heard some simplex users for the most part CB'ing it, cussing, talking things I would not want rebroadcast and have a hard time allowing them on.
 
JWILKERS is right, get permission, if they don't answer then that is the answer you seek. In our area there are repeaters on almost all the GMRS channels, some are open with travel tone, some are closed. I have always asked, those that don't allow I completely respect.

I sure wouldn't want mine living under my roof.

Thanks for the words to keep the post going the right way.  I read back through it and want to answer a couple questions.  We do not have a travel tone on the repeaters yet.  Tim has to get his Motorola MSR2000 repeater up there so he can use his good controller.  When he use his controller remotely he will add a travel tone to it.  We have both of them registered on this site.  He might get to the Paulding site first, so he will get that one running first, but he hopes to get the Sandusky, Ohio site up soon and put a travel tone on it.  It will be an open repeater for all to use.
 
     I will read back through this thread again but I might have mentioned Tim retired from a two way mobile company as their main tech.  He still helps them out a bit so the owner has allowed him to put up the GMRS repeaters at commercial sites with most being at the 400 Ft area.  All on commercial towers, or tall buildings, and all 7/8 hard line and Super Station Masters already in line.  The two way radio company owner has allowed all sites for free, including the use of the antennas etc., and Tim helps him out by doing a repair, or new install, for free once in awhile.
 
Jerry

Quarterwave - everything is cool at your end and we sent you a PM regarding the situation to which you have responded to.
 
We will only say this one more time in the open before the staff here takes punitive action:
 
We DO NOT want to see any posted suggestions regarding BLATANT** unlawful operation - such as over power being an "OK - who cares" situation, Ham equipmment being used on GMRS frequencies and so on.  Any further postings of this type will trigger an automatic staff response which may decrease our membership by one, as well as being removed from the main website registration. The suggestions made by the individual in question may also potentially stir the interest of the Commission because the Commission IP address shows up occasionally as a guest here and the call sign of the person is clearly visible. Need we say more?
 
 
The MyGMRS staff
________________________________________________________________________
 
[** ref: the Part 90 equipment in Part 95 service is not a blatant issue as of this time and is still on the table for discussions as usual.]

Power doesn't always translate to distance. 
 
A couple of things to remember, the biggest attenuator to FM communications is the ground. Path loss on a 50W GMRS radio, a commercial grade receiver, and 1/4 wave antennas is nearly 6000 miles. However, this number goes south quickly when you start talking about punching through urban environments, trees, hills, etc. With GMRS, you're pretty much guaranteed a successful transmission if there is unobstructed line of sight. More power means greater risk for desensing the receiver (what good does it do to have a repeater that can be heard for 100 miles but only talked to for 35?) which means adding extra filters, more antenna separation, etc. 
 
The 675 and 700 repeaters in Lubbock. The 675 repeater is on the tallest building for 120 miles. The antenna is 360 feet off the ground. It's running 50W at the transmitter and 40W at the antenna (which is a DB420).That's 477W ERP. It fizzles out about mile marker 41 on I27 (it's located at marker 4 roughly). The 700 repeater is a good 70 feet below it running 32W (23W at the DB420)...it fizzles out around mile marker 38. The two sites are 1000 feet away from one another. 70 feet is what mainly makes up that extra 3 miles.
 
95% of the time, you'll never notice the difference between a repeater running 200W or one running 25W if it's in a good location.

Thanks, Jerry - Sounds as if that system might have more usable range than the local Sheriff's system... but, that is common with many GMRS systems.
 

Also, many GMRS repeaters require permission from the owners and/or paid membership.
 
Sent from my LG-D631 using Tapatalk

RFMedic is right, not just the sites needs, but in a heavy RF environment you might see a lot of desense happening, effectively making your repeater deaf.
 
I would if looking also consider the other services on the site and the amount of activity it has.

I sure wouldn't want mine living under my roof.

RFMedic is right, not just the sites needs, but in a heavy RF environment you might see a lot of desense happening, effectively making your repeater deaf.
 
I would if looking also consider the other services on the site and the amount of activity it has.

We just relocated from our little 30 foot mast with an effective 40 foot height to a commercial tower site at 220 feet. Yearly costs for mine are $1200 a year (which is probably cheap) with the site at one of 3 of the highest spots in the 4 county area. I was lucky that there was an open slot with an antenna already in place. It's on the east side of the tower which is not optimal for me, but oddly covers like a glove for my area of operation. Portables that are 10-15+ miles from the repeater are quieted outside and probably an S2-3 in a basement of aluminum sided house at same distance. Mobiles are like S5.
 
Moving our site to the new location was day and night for coverage. I would say you would want to evaluate what your true coverage needs are, our original system was covering 90% of my AO mobile and 50% portable, something I could live with, my choice was place a 70 foot tower and probably get 100% coverage mobile and 70% portable, again something that I could live with. I was fortunate that I work at the shop were the 220 slot is at.
 
In our area we have repeaters placed throughout the area and were technically afforded 100% coverage even on handhelds as long at the control radio could hit them all. So investing in your system I would see what your options are and if alternate sites will meet your needs before investing a lot of money into tower space, unless you are Corey and should be playing the lottery with his luck 

We just relocated from our little 30 foot mast with an effective 40 foot height to a commercial tower site at 220 feet. Yearly costs for mine are $1200 a year (which is probably cheap) with the site at one of 3 of the highest spots in the 4 county area. I was lucky that there was an open slot with an antenna already in place. It's on the east side of the tower which is not optimal for me, but oddly covers like a glove for my area of operation. Portables that are 10-15+ miles from the repeater are quieted outside and probably an S2-3 in a basement of aluminum sided house at same distance. Mobiles are like S5.
 
Moving our site to the new location was day and night for coverage. I would say you would want to evaluate what your true coverage needs are, our original system was covering 90% of my AO mobile and 50% portable, something I could live with, my choice was place a 70 foot tower and probably get 100% coverage mobile and 70% portable, again something that I could live with. I was fortunate that I work at the shop were the 220 slot is at.
 
In our area we have repeaters placed throughout the area and were technically afforded 100% coverage even on handhelds as long at the control radio could hit them all. So investing in your system I would see what your options are and if alternate sites will meet your needs before investing a lot of money into tower space, unless you are Corey and should be playing the lottery with his luck 

Night before last I drove to the far north side of Chicago to the town of Glenview, IL to attend the bi-monthly meeting of the NSEA (North Shore Emergency Association), a GMRS organization that was founded in 1966 (that's 50 years!) by P. Randal Knowles, a practicing attorney who is still very much active today.

He has long been a champion for GMRS and has authored many cogent and factual submissions to the FCC's various NPRM's that threaten GMRS licensees. I invite interested parties to read them closely at this link:

http://www.nsea.com/fcc/WHAT'S%20COOKING.htm

I have to add that I was very impressed with the professionalism of NSEA and hope to visit with them as often as possible. They have graciously offered to assist me in my attempt to promote such an association of GMRS licensees here in Northwest Indiana.
 
I also met Marc Drazin who owns the two repeaters that were until last February located at the top of the Hancock building. He told me that he hopes to have them both back on the air within the next few months. The antennas are not located in the gallery, but are in fact on the roof.

Ebay's rules and policies greatly favor the buyer. If someone feels they got ripped off, it's likely that they did not follow through with Ebay's procedures for that sort of thing.
 
I have 6 Motorola mobiles and 5 Motorola portables that I purchased on Ebay. All of them were at least as good as the seller represented them if not much better. But, I did my homework and knew exactly what I was looking for. If the seller doesn't furnish all the info I want to see like model number, serial number, more than one or two pics plus affirmation that the radio works and that the codeplug is not password protected, then I ignore the listing and move on. Fully 75% of satisfaction on  purchases on Ebay is the buyer's ability to tell the good from the bad. You can not blame the sellers for all of the problems. Just read some of the negative feedback that buyers try to foist on sellers.

Kudo's!
 
We moved to a commercial site (I work there and he has an open spot) at 220 feet. I was originally 40 feet and sketchy, now I can hit portable at S3 when mobile was in the noise floor. Even in basements and inside a home with aluminum siding. Coverage is actually better then 2 county PD's have coverage.
 
Love that 408!

Not sure where you would pickup used radios, controller and duplexer other then eBay. I have been buying and selling on eBay for years, if something was not as listed as a buyer you have lots of protection as long as you conduct the transaction in eBay and use PayPal. 

Antenna Porn
 
Andrew DB408-B
180' of 7/8 Hard line
4' Side arm
 
Now all I need is some good weather, my climber and a few friends!
 

We run MDC on all our units, each unit has it's own ID, the lone Vertex 210A is without MDC (I need to see if Vertex or someone makes a module we can install. We do post-ptt on our units.
 
Zap turned me on to the Alias setup so each radio has all the aliases in them, example, my wife's mobile has a 4 digit ID of 1956 which shows as David 56.
 
Oddly my Astro Saber's seem to not have the chirp sound on unkey of my other radios.
 
We run Astro Saber's and PM400's on the system.
 
We are also using 2 tone QC on the radios.

here a re a couple of pics of a relic I took out last week.
this was put in service in 1983 and has a date code of 1981. I personally worked on many of these for many yrs. this was the last one to be removed from a site and was still working but not live to an antenna. it was left as a backup when it was replaced by an MTR in 98 or 99.
http://i1105.photobucket.com/albums/h358/erscom/Other/KIMG0076_zpsjhcknj7z.jpg
http://i1105.photobucket.com/albums/h358/erscom/Other/KIMG0075_zpscevak96w.jpg
http://i1105.photobucket.com/albums/h358/erscom/Other/KIMG0077_zpstybudfzp.jpg
http://i1105.photobucket.com/albums/h358/erscom/Other/KIMG0078_zps90ljpcwd.jpg
http://i1105.photobucket.com/albums/h358/erscom/Other/KIMG0079_zpsywvn7cwv.jpg
http://i1105.photobucket.com/albums/h358/erscom/Other/KIMG0080_zpsrpw2eoim.jpg
 

Hi Everyone,
 
It's come to my attention that a few members may be posting advertisements for their business in an aggressive manner. For example, they may not be interacting with the other members in a productive way, only pushing their products or services.
 
I think it's a good time to enact a new policy for the forums whereby member advertising is prohibited without written consent from me, the owner. I don't mind a simple signature line that includes your company name, but I do not want to allow posts that are advertising your business. We cannot be held responsible for these posts and we certainly do not endorse any companies other than our approved advertisers.
 
If you'd like to advertise with us, please get in touch with me to discuss. I'm very flexible on rates; doesn't matter if you're a small company or large.
 
Our moderators Gary, William and Scott, as well as myself, reserve the right to edit or remove any posts which serve as an advertising platform that isn't approved by me. This serves to protect the other members as well as myGMRS and its parent company, RepeaterFinder, LLC.
 
Thanks for your understanding,
 
Rich
 
WQEJ577
N2DLX