wayoverthere

One of the towers out here (that hosts utilities and various levels of public safety, in addition to ham repeaters) is currently fighting through the post fire rebuild process...despite assurance from the county that everything would be allowed to be rebuilt to pre-fire state, they've disallowed an extension that was approved and added, and are letting the neighbors (that came after the tower) shove in their objections and roadblocks to rebuilding at all

Can verify my older mxt115 completely skips 8-14, while the BTech 50x1 has them for receive only.

CB, no. those will be tuned for around 27mhz, not the 462.xxx and 467.xxx range that GMRS operates in. This is probably pretty close to what you have in mind, and i've been using it for awhile for both gmrs and 70cm ham. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00TY2KP5K/ depending where you're running, a 1/2 wave may be better (at around 13") if you don't have some metal for a ground plane. if you do, a 1/4 wave may work well, and be less vulnerable to getting hit.

Correct. like a handheld, the mxt115 is just a radio, and needs a control operator to be of any use. The rt97 (or any other repeater) will take the received signal and rebroadcast it.

Ahh, yeah, that makes more sense ?

Joe, On power supply, I'd check with Retevis; I can't see them shipping it without some form of power supply, since it doesn't seem to take 12v directly. Brandon, you could absolutely set up a radio at the house to talk to/from, and someone could manually relay messages, but the mxt115 isn't able to act as a repeater on its own.

Retevis has a few models that are repeater capable, and even a kit with the repeater, a mobile, and a couple handhelds, plus antennas and some accessories. https://www.retevis.com/gmrs-solution-kits-gmrs-handheld-mobile-radio-gmrs-repeater-accessories Outside that, wouxun's recent stuff is pretty well regarded for a little more coin, the kg805g (have one), kg905g, kg935g, and kg-uv9g pro.

can confirm the MXT115 can access repeaters, though being narrowband they have a harder time with wideband repeaters, and the older models don't support split tones (different input and output tone). narrowband repeaters shouldn't be an issue. the GTX are no go, as they don't have the repeater offsets programmed, and AFAIK, have no provisions for programming. you would be able to listen, though.

Thanks for the reality check. My urge to tinker doesn't always pay off with good results in reality.

Is it bad that I'm looking at those internal pictures and thinking heyyy, it looks kind of doable to bypass that duplexer? Add one of the higher rated (50w or so) mobile units, and a small linear amp in the transmit path...Depending on the amp, low power on the repeater should be able to keep it under 50 watts.

i ended up grabbing a 4204 after all. what finally pushed me over was testing some stuff with my icom base, and how fast the fan kicks on. the vertex have significant heat sinks, and get by without. so the icom will move to the truck, and the 4204/4207 will be the base setup. will probably add a switch shortly, to have gmrs antenna on one side and the other side to a diplexer and gp1.

The ones I have seem to be 403-470 for the UHF gear. Haven't tried out of band with the vx's, since they cover everything I want them to (70cm, and keeping an ear on gmrs). I know the evx, the software flat out refuses anything out of band, similar to your motorola (Tried frequencies in the 440's with one of the 450-512 evx). Ive seen hints that hex editing can get around that, but that's one of those back burner projects....if I could get them down to 440 i'd be happy.

I want to say i saw Crestline (I want to say 575 or 675) as linked up when I was looking the other day

So it occurred to me to come back and add some updates to this: Added a 2nd (used) vx4207, packed the nos one away for now. 2nd got installed in the truck feeding that tram browning antenna, and mxt115 went on the shelf. Btech back in service next to the icom in my office. Added a vhf vx-p829 to the pile, now have p25 on both bands ? also grabbed a dual band signal stalk to have something dual band and smaller than the comet 2x4sr. Didn't listen to my own advice, and been trolling eBay...after a week or so of debating, I have a vx4204 on the way (vhf twin of my 4207), which will take up residence on my desk, the 4207 will join it, and the icom will go to the truck. The fan noise of the icom was the deciding factor. Have some mics inbound as well, both for the handhelds and the mobiles, and a diplexer. Midland may find it's way back to the truck to join the icom, or I may move the btech out and run the two base radios on separate antennas (so the 4207 can do 70cm and gmrs...doable with just an antenna swap on the mount. Have some vacay shortly and looking forward to running up the hill and seeing what distances I can reach some repeaters. Have my eye on one that's a good 120 mile shot, but looks like I should have line of sight, and I could hear it last week a bit scratchy, so I'm hopefully I can do it line of sight across the valley.

More the latter. I want to say there's one node in the greater LA area that may have started participating for the national net, but that's about it. Alternately, there are some sites that join the net that also have availability via zello.

I will say so far, so good with mine. With the first vx, I got the packs and a charger from cut rate batteries, and added a couple more packs to the pile with the 2nd vx. With the 3rd, i paid a bit more and got a vertex charger with it, which seems to have no problem with the aftermarket packs. Same story with my evx, added one from cut rate to the pile, as 2 of the 3 came with larger capacity Motorola packs (dont know if the seller realized this), 3rd had a standard capacity. The evx charger had no problem with the cut rate pack, though I'll note its the basic charger, not an intrinsically safe. I think the packs for the vx and vx-p ran around $30/ea, and the evx was close to $70.

It's not a 100% confirmation that you're getting in clearly, but you can transmit, and listen for what's called a "squelch tail", which sounds like a short pop or burst of static. This will let you know you at least opened the repeater. Some repeaters will also come back with a courtesy tone or beep when you unkey. Most current radios come programmed with all the frequencies you need, and from there it's just being in range and having the right tones. You can hedge your bets on range by getting closer in to the presumed location of the repeater.

If you're listening to the output from the repeater, what the scan will pick up is the tone coming out from the repeater, which may not be the same as what it wants to get IN. to scan for the tone to get into the repeater, you have to pick up some other traffic carrying that tone going into the repeater. This is the reason listening on the same frequency (467.xxx) that the repeater is listening on....you want to hear the traffic TO the repeater, not coming FROM it.

One suggestion I'll make is try to dig a little more into the setup on that (or any) repeater before pinning your plans on it, primarily whether they have backup power in case grid power is down.

Only if you have a tone set on your receive....think of tones as a filter on what you hear, rather than keeping others from hearing anything. If you have a tone set, you only hear signals with that tone. If you have no tone set, there's no filter in place, so you hear everything on the channel.

As does the btech, which also interchanges just fine with wiring harnesses for my icom and vertex radios.

The biggest consideration will be matching your antenna to the transmit range. Something tuned for gmrs, 460-470, or a dual band commercial (150 or so on vhf, and 450-480 or in uhf) would be good matches, generally in that order. For receiving, you have a lot more leeway on what will work, if not necessarily 100% ideal. As shipped, they will only transmit on gmrs, as that's a fairly strict requirement for part 95e approval; the rest will be receive only. The db20-g's twin, the anytone 779uv, is able to be unlocked for ham usage (@michaelLAX is a fan of this one...not sure if the db20-g can also.

This. Nearly everything I've dealt with, radio wise, the cable is what the computer recognizes, so it won't notice the switch. The one deviation has been a radioddity gd73 (ham dmr radio), but that takes a box-standard micro usb. I also have nothing but praise for the bluemax49ers products. Zero problems with any of them, across 4 different models, one said not to work with anything but the manufacturer cables.

If I were running a powerpole distribution block like @axorlov, I'd grab a couple of the t connector to power pole cables DXE has. As it is, I'm tempted, because my psu has power ports on the front. I also spliced up a powerpole to 12v socket.

So...for the price, I'd sooner pay a few bucks more and buy better. I've tried a couple times getting the premade wiring with the connector from Amazon, and it was like a wish dot com version of the connector...the dimensions were too off for it to even connect. If you look on the "replacement parts" list for some of the popular radios that use the same connector on dxengineering, they have the "connector to battery" section available separately. Here's one for the yaesu ft-2980r: https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/ysu-t90258252 Or troll the whole section: https://www.dxengineering.com/search/part-type/dc-power-cable-assemblies?GroupBy=SKU&SortBy=Default&SortOrder=Ascending