marcspaz

Try swapping radios. You will get to experience what she hears, to help better understand, or establish if it's environmental interference. Let us know what the firsthand experience is. If you can use your phone to share a video, we may pick up an indicator, too. You may just have a defect in that radio.

I agree with Steve and Randy. If you want a light weight explanation on how this stuff works, you can read about it here... Good luck and have fun.

The XTL5000 is a commercial mobile vhf/uhf radio that was used privately and by first responders. It's pretty sturdy and comfortably goes up to about 850MHz, depending on the version. It was discontinued about 10 years or so. I really like it, especially because it can be remote mounted, but I have many other modern radio with a lot more features. So, like my icom 7000, it just sits in a drawer just waiting for the occasional test ride

I was iffy about mentioning this, since it wasn't asked by Randy, but the last three 30 second transmissions on high power, the amp meter on my power supply was showing the radio current draw was starting to waiver. It would dip about 2 amps and pop back up. I was loosing confidence toward the end, but it survived. LOL

This is what I got. Have to be honest... it's hot, but it "feels" hotter. LOL The IR was a good idea. 5 min Standby = 71.5 (room temp) 10 min Low Pwr (30 sec on, 30 sec off) = 95.7 10 min Hi Pwr (30 sec on, 30 sec off) = 124.4

It's been more than a year since I used mine. I do remember it gets hot, like I thought something was wrong. The guy I got it from swore it was normal. He has been a Fire/EMT truck builder, doing all the electronics. He said there is a temp sensor and if it gets too hot, you get a warning on the head display. I am going to be out for most of the day Saturday, but when I get home, I'll pull it out and run it full tilt for a few minutes. I'll take a few temp reading with the IR thermometer so you have something to compare yours to.

No doubt! The members have a lot of knowledge and great feedback. I'm thankful, for sure.

I sent this to the team. This may be the way we go. Thanks for the link.

So, I found this today and was thinking about trying this system. They state their device resolves a lot of that stuff. https://jps.com/products/qmt-1b/ I'm a little gun shy because I have heard what you stated above from basically everyone. I don't trust online reviews either. What are your thoughts on this? This is good to hear. I read about this today. I may go further down that rabbit hole before spending money, now that a second person is mentioning it. But, isn't a retimer essentially what the GPS clocking devices I read about would do? It's a stratum 1 device that syncs the signals to counter the network latency. I believe all the repeaters are Quantars. I used to think I had money until I started playing radio. Then I realized I am dumb and poor. LOL I thought about doing this myself... but I am not sure I trust them. I found that most of the time, you get an opinion instead of cited code or rules. I would love to go the RF linking route. But I am concerned about LOS as well as the tower space and extra hardware expenses.

So, unfortunately, it appears we can't legally RF link the repeaters outside of GMRS frequencies. Three of the people on the project are FCC licensed General Class commercial engineers with several decades of experience each, and they all agree that the rules significantly restrict open air relay, as we have to adhere to the GMRS frequencies and pairing requirements for any transmission to be legal. Short of using every pair (we have a receive site on every pair) and getting really creative on the voting, the closet we can do is wireless networking, but not every site has the LOS needed. That is what has brought us to the internet option. If we could RF link, I think we would be good to go. I appreciate all the feedback so far. This is good conversation that we can discuss.

Hey folks. I am trying to hammer out a problem with an internet voting system for repeaters. Hopefully you folks can point me in the right direction. I am helping build a receiver-node linked repeater system. We have a legal limit transmitter on a tall tower and the repeater can cover a vast area as far as where it can be heard. However, handheld radios and low power mobiles that are far out... maybe 40% plus out from the center of the coverage area... they can hear the repeater fine, however, they don't have enough power to get into the machine reliably, if at all. We have a bunch of repeaters around the region that we could use as a receiver voter system. We are trying to put it in place over public internet service (we would consider wireless P2P links like Aironet, etc., too) and we are having an issue with networking latency causing the wrong receiver to win. I have read a few places that there is a GPS time sync tool that causes a brief delay for the signals to sync at the voter and re-transmit the proper SNR source. However, I am not finding any device brands or models listed and my Google-Fu seems to be dramatically lacking. All I am finding is new systems well over $7K per system. Do any of you have this type of setup working successfully? Could you make recommendations on either the proper GPS time source model or a proper voting system that accounts for network latency, and won't cost me a kidney? Thanks in advance. Marc

Subbed.

I think you hit the nail square on the head with this statement.

I think you're correct. However, the local, state and federal government gets folks like ARES/RACES, REACT and CERT involved becuse they know that as robust as their system is, it's only reliable on a good day. That said, it's also cheaper for your civilian volunteers to bring their own gear, too. The responsibility of design, purchase and maintenance is covered by us (volunteers).

Just a point of interest, PIV/CAC cards for government employees and contractors cost more than $35 each and aren't valid as long as a GMRS license. If a government agency really wants to have a GMRS repeater for their staff to use, I'm 100% certain they would pony up the few bucks for the employees to have an individual license to use on the government owned radio. Just a thought.

Wow. I'm all for using the search feature and using existing info, but I am pretty sure reviving an 8 year old thread is a record for this forum. LOL I am pretty sure, those in the know actually prefer the legacy LMR stuff for the rock-solid performance and true full legal limit power. It's not for the faint of heart or technically challenged, though.

You have both renewed my faith in man. LOL

@Blaise... I don't know that the shield concept wouldn't work. The question would be, how much would it impact the receiver or the transmit SWR. I don't know if it would work well, even if the transmit loop is stopped. Something I think may happen is, the metal would act like a reflector and you would end up making a 2 element beam, instead. LoL Anyway, with two handheld radios, it wasn't worth the effort to try to remedy the issue. While building a quality repeater was significantly more expensive, I like it better for a bunch of reasons.

Didn't realize there are two threads... copied. I bought this exact unit from Amazon... I tried using it with two Baofeng handhelds. Even though they call it cross-band, the radios actually determine if its same band or cross-band. Bottom line... it ended up in the trash. It relies on the volume level of the radio, VOX operation, and if you try to use it on the same band, unless you have incredibly expensive radios with great filtering on the front-end, the transmitter wipes out the receiver and it gets stuck in a transmit loop until you turn off either one of the two radios. I am a geek by trade, so I ended up building a full-blown portable repeater. At this point, I would recommend you just buy a pre-programed Retevis.

I bought this exact unit from Amazon... I tried using it with two Baofeng handhelds. Even though they call it cross-band, the radios actually determine if its same band or cross-band. Bottom line... it ended up in the trash. It relies on the volume level of the radio, VOX operation, and if you try to use it on the same band, unless you have incredibly expensive radios with great filtering on the front-end, the transmitter wipes out the receiver and it gets stuck in a transmit loop until you turn off either one of the two radios. I am a geek by trade, so I ended up building a full-blown portable repeater. At this point, I would recommend you just buy a pre-programed Retevis.

The government agencies I work with usually ask volunteer civilians to partner with them, provide the hardware and human capital. I'm not aware of any of them doing it on their own, but my experience is obviously anecdotal. My team is in process of putting an amateur repeater on the county dispatch tower at the EOC. We are already approved for the antenna and radio install. I am going to see if we can put up a dual band antenna and see if we can co-locate the amateur and GMRS systems there.

I know a lot of people hate the licensing process and think there should not be any, but the FCC keeps big business and people with more money than Joe Q. User from bullying their way into radio spectrum that individual private users access. The only way the FCC can track exactly how popular the bands are and how many users are actually using it, is via the licensing process. If there isn't enough traceable activity, the FCC will sell the space to commercial users and we will lose our allocations. I only mention this because, I think if we run into people that are unlicensed in a services that they should have one, we should explain this situation to them in encourage them to spend the little bit of effort and funds so we can all continue to enjoy the services over the coming years. One is a CCR, the other is an ECR. LOL

That's greoffloading. My car club uses them for cruises, too. A lot of people use them for off-roading. I've been pleased with my Baofeng radios as well as the Cobra and Uniden blister pack radios.

80 years in prison and a $1,000,000,000 fine, or possibly a no-no letter, maybe. Most likely nothing. Depends on who you're asking.

Nevermind...