423radioman

Currently up in the mountains of western NC for vacation. I'm in an AirBNB at the top of a fairly high mountain. I have a repeater programmed in my Baofang UV-5G Plus with a Nagoya 771G antenna. The repeater is in Waynesville, NC roughly 35 miles to the east of us!! When transmitting to the repeater, I get a kerchunk with some random beeping tones, indicating I'm "hitting" the repeater. I have an additional Baofang UV-5G Plus with a Nagoya UT-72 that I also have tuned to the repeater (have the antenna grounded on a baking dish placed on top of some cabinets by the window). The second radio can hear the same kerchunk and beeping sounds but not the voice/test message transmitted. To trouble shoot, we tested the radios on simplex on various channels and are able to hear each other just fine. When we've tried talking to the repeater, we've done so with the radios roughly 50 feet apart (not sure if this has an affect). Do I just not have enough power or a good enough antenna on either radio to be able to hear the test message being transmitted by the other radio? I figured if power or the antenna were a problem, I wouldn't be able to hit the repeater all together. I've heard a few transmissions on the repeater, but it's the same kerchunk with the beeping sounds and no voice message (not sure if they just keyed up or actually transmitted a message though). Anyone have any insights as to what could be going on?

Oh nice, read through the manual 5 times but must've missed that setting. Thanks!

Recently got into this hobby and purchased a Boafang UV-5G+. I was planning on adding all of the repeaters within a 100-200 mile radius of me in the event that I would want to use one when travelling throughout my state. I was able to do this with Chirp Next, the only problem now though is I can't tell which repeater is which as there is no descriptor or unique identifier on my screen other than the frequency and transmit tones. I don't have the repeaters memorized either. How many repeaters do you all keep in your memory channels? Do you guys memorize the repeater info when travelling to an area where there are repeaters you want to use? Or do you print out a list and keep it with your radio? Interested to see how others go about this process.