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Welcome Tim. GMRS/FRS is a viable solution for your situation. A small mobile unit set up as a base station at your home with an attic antenna would guarantee communications between the two houses. A 20 to 25W mobile is all that's needed (actually 5 watts on an attic antenna would probably work). Midland makes a 15W unit that would be perfect. Look on Amazon for a small 12V DC power supply with at least 15A of output and you're golden for the base. A J-Pole antenna is what I'd use, there are several different ones available. Here's one made from copper pipe rather from twin-lead plastic cable: 462 MHz Land Mobile (GMRS) J-Pole Antenna - KB9VBR Antennas (jpole-antenna.com)

I believe it's called the ping-pong effect when one repeater starts keying another and they bounce back and forth. Other than different codes or powering down there isn't a way to stop it. Cell companies had the problem when private repeater nodes started appearing. Thet could shut the feed down to an antenna and then send the FCC to cite the repeater operator for an illegal transmitter.

Comet, Diamond, Nagoya are just a few that make replacement/upgrade antennas.

Ham repeaters in my corner of NC are a mixed bag as far as tones. Some use them, many do not. N2GE, the repeater on Mt. Mitchell which reaches into 4 states does not use tones along with our club repeater, N4MOE on Mt. Spivey. There are 3 repeaters on Bearwallow. Two of those use tones, the UHF and the GMRS.

Quality isn't free. It takes time and money to develop many of the things you believe should be available in a $20 radio. Some of those features may, at some point, trickle down to bottom tier radios but it would only happen after the costs of the initial development and testing had been paid for. Bottom end radios are just that, bottom end. Many are poor reverse engineered copies of more expensive offerings by other manufacturers but then again, they are poorly engineered copies that will not have any quality components or testing other than it powered up - sometimes.

As long as a licensed operator is "in control" of the station it is permissible for an unlicensed person to use your radio. In other services, the licensed operator would establish contact and then hand the mic to the other person. While the rules are a little vague, the use of a call sign is limited to the actual person holding the license. That does not preclude an unlicensed person calling your call sign and identifying themselves as "Unit X."

The PDP-11 was referred to as a mini. Mini computers were often rack mounted and performed many of the same tasks as mainframes. These were displaced by the PC coming on the scene. Minis were quite prevalent beginning in the early 70's thru the 80's. They were almost all gone by the early 90's. Digital Equpment or DEC was one of the biggest manufacturers of those systems. Some of their models were the PDP-7, PDP-8 and PDP-10 along with their flagship PDP-11. The different models had various capabilities with the -7 being the least powerful. These systems often acted as front ends or pre=processors for many mainframes from companies like IBM. Univac, Control Data, Burroughs and others including Xerox. I spent 10 years with a mini manufacturer, Four Phase Systems. Our systems replaced a great many IBM terminal systems preprocessing key punch data and acting as print spoolers routing printer output to various printers scattered around different locations.

A good portion of the support costs for a product can be distributed over a group of radios using common components and design firmware in the unit. That would allow products such as programming software would have a common core with modules linked in for different versions to support addition features on higher end units.

There is allso the issue of support costs. Developing the necessary infrastructure to support a radio that retails at a low price point can end up costing the company more than sales returns.

Check for a local radio shop. Any shop that handles Motorola should be able to do the work for a small fee.

If you have enough space, why not put in a base station antenna with some gain? There are several that don't require a ground plane as the have radials that are only a few inches in length. Your best bet would be to plan for the future and get a dual band if you want to take the ham Technician test. The ham 440 band is just below the FRS/GMRS band.

It depends on where the repeater is installed. Remember, height equals coverage area.

Start with HRO (hamradio.com)

If you have the circuit board with the failed parts out of the case, take it and the parts to ay radio shop and ask them for a quote to replace the components. They may do the work for only the bench rate as there would be no disassembly or testing involved.

I believe that 50W radios are overkill for what you are asking. A 15 or 25W radio would accomplish the same thing. The key point is the antennas used and the height of the antenna. Yes, power can be applied to "burn through" the buildings, but a high antenna is a lot easier to accomplish. There are several places you can locate for fiberglass or aluminum poles that will raise an antenna 40 feet or more. A 40 foot pole with an antenna on it attached to your roof is like getting an additional 3 stories of height. As an example, look at this one: MFJ MFJ-1917 Antenna Accessories Masts, MFJ1917 (hamradio.com). That mast and a BTECH UV-25X2 BTECH UV-25X2 – BaoFeng Radios (baofengtech.com) would set you back about the same dollar wise. I've used the 25X2 since I was licensed and it's a solid unit for home use. It isn't built for repeater use; the duty cycle is only about 12 minutes of continued use per hour. I also used the radio for ham work as it is both VHF and UHF but it is a Part 15 radio only.

Yagis are multi-element antennas having 3 or more elements. The rear element is the reflector and is 5% longer than the dipole which is the next element. Ahead of the dipole or driven element are directors; each is 5% shorter than the element behind it. The more elements, the narrower the antenna focus is and greater gain.

The other thing to consider is that an antenna designed for receiving may not handle the transmitter's output power.

Gee, I'm a little confused here Miichael. When I tune to a repeater I thought my receiver was set to the output of the repeater rather than the repeater input frequency. Is it different in your radio?

Don't assume the FCC checks a radio for anything other than the requirements to meet the certification requested. They don't even test most units; they leave it up to independent but certified labs. The FCC is also not interested in any software provided for a radio, so it isn't included in the testing as it doesn't generate any RF from itself. If the radio's output deviates from those submitted for acceptance, then the radio no longer meets certification -- period. Most radios that are type accepted for parts 90 and 97 are also Part 15 which is where the radio does meet it certification as amateur radios are all Part 15. I'll lay odds that any GMRS certified radio also carries a Part 15 certification as part of the FCC ID.

The choices for HTs not manufactured in China are slim at the lower end. I hold both a ham and GMRS license and run a Yeasu FT-4XR for a HT. The HT can be unlocked from the front panel to enable an expanded frequency range that will include GMRS. The FT-4XR and FT-65 are both built in China but are Japanese designs and specifications. Higher up on the list are ICOM units, built in Japan. Kenwood HTs are also Japanese and good quality. I haven't looked into these but I believe they can also be stretched to cover GMRS. It really depends on what your goals are. If you plan to go ham, the Technician level course and test is easy. I recommend you go ahead and get the Tech level license as you will find amateur 2 meter and 440 repeaters are quite plentiful. The drawback is that the license is for the individual and not family. When it comes time to upgrade to a mobile, the choices become much greater. I have both a Chinese manufactured BaoFeng and the Japanese ICOM. I'mcurrently using the ICOM as a base unit running off a Chinese 30 amp power supply. The ICOM is stock, but it can be modified easily to increase the frequency range for GMRS/MURS coverage. The BaoFeng, a BTECH UV-25X2, came with a frequency range covering both amateur and GMRS/FRS/MURS.

We captured some slow scan images from the ISS during Field Day.

Well said. Just because you can do it doesn't make it right.

All coax injects loss. The amount of power lost in the coax can be determined by looking up the specification from the manufacturer and applying it.

Gigaparts (www.gigaparts.com) has a Bridgecom used unit available for $1400.00 All told, with antenna and power you are looking at approximately $2,000 for a commercial grade repeater.

Amateurs are restricted to bands of frequencies that are not channelized. Depending on a ham's authorization they may transmit on any frequency within that range. FRS/GMRS users are not authorized to operate on any frequency within their band but only on specific frequencies (channels) within that band allocation. FRS/GMRS users are also limited in the type of emission their radio may use. Amateurs are not to allow for the development of new emission types which may be adopted by other services. Amateurs also use frequency coordinators to assign repeater channels and once that frequency is assigned other hams avoid the input and output frequencies to prevent interference. Additionally, repeater frequencies are assigned from a specific frequency range in each band which is also published.