tweiss3

You do have to keep in mind lighting requirements over 200' AGL I believe, that is FAA safety.

It depends entirely on what radio you are using. On the Midland radios, I think you can only program 1 repeater for each pair, meaning you have to switch the tones when you want to switch repeaters. Others are similar to the Midlands. The Part 95 certified LMR radios (Motorola, Kenwood, etc.) can just add another entry for another repeater.

Same

I'd listen to both.

FB2 Mobile Relay FX1 Control Look at RR wiki for more information: https://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Missouri_Department_of_Transportation_(MODOT)_(MO)

Any CERT team should not be using the cheapest radios they can find. In that case, stick with cell phones or zello. For a club, why wine, just use FRS radios for $15/each and not worry about licensing. For GMRS, you are required to use a GMRS certified radio, not a MARS ham radio. I've bought plenty of Kenwoods for what a majority of those certified CCRs cost. There are too many places that people want to be cheap where they absolutely shouldn't. CERT is working with someone's life. Motorcycle clubs, you are riding a $45,000+ bike, and won't spend a few hundred bucks on a decent radio? I just don't get it. It's not like you won't spend money, you just won't spend it on the appropriate radio communications because there are $11.99 radios on amazon and "that's such a deal, it just has to work well enough". The options are there, you just won't hear it: 1) Stick with FRS, and have no licensing, 2) Have every member responsible for their own GMRS license or 3) get appropriate LMR licenses and radios, which in the long run doesn't actually cost more when you drag it out over a 20+ year lifecycle.

I'll add a +1 to a power issue.

Low cost? The $200 fee is cheaper than 6 users being licensed under GMRS. Your biggest issue is going to be using good equipment certified for Part 90 LMR, not MARS modified ham radios. If you read all of Part 90, it's not hard to identify how to get licensed for county wide/state wide operations without coordination, you can even license a mobile repeater without coordination, but you have to prove eligibility under 90.35 (a). As @gortex2 said above, a non-profit may be able to get out of the fees, but you will need a federal tax ID.

I will add that I have a DMR only radio (SL7550) that has a super stubby antenna, and it works good around the house with a hotspot and the 1 repeater that has great coverage. I never tried to test it's overall distance between two radios, but I've heard it's not great. The antenna

If the antenna isn't a helical antenna (many VHF antennas are), then it's easy to tell the performance from length. A 1/4 wave antenna is 6", and requires a ground plane/counterpoise which is the radio/you holding the radio. Any longer and it could be a 5/8 or 1/2 wave antenna, and you do get increased performance from those. A 1/4 wave antenna is unity gain, 0 db, or 2.1dbi all of which mean the same thing but many manufacturers don't properly publish which unit they mean, either in ignorance or purposefully to get better sales. The half wave (12") antennas work better because they don't need a ground plane/counter poise to work, so the undersized counterpoise of the radio doesn't reduce the antenna's effectiveness. I stopped going with the "stubby" antennas long ago, and just deal with however the antenna needs to be. My Harris uses the 9" long multiband whip, and it honestly isn't really an inconvenience.

I've used ebay with caution, and https://used-radios.com/ is an actual radio shop, so what they sell works.

The Ham VOIP image has both Allstar and Echolink baked into it. Allstar is best for linking repeaters together, and hotspot nodes, but Echolink is a nice addition for when you only have your phone and are out of town.

It only oversteps if it's linked to a 10M FM repeater (yes, there are some). In general, you are ok, because its only 6M, 2M, 70CM and higher frequencies. Its a pretty decent tool when out of town, but its has it's annoyances.

Yea, unless you can find a friend that has the updates, it's not possible. Also, with 2.0, you would need to have an active firmware subscription on the repeater with is $$. I would suggest you stick with CPS 16, and find the modification that allows wideband (same as the entitlement, but you don't have to go through the hoops of registering it with Moto, because you can't anymore). It's probably why it was chucked, support won't even look at it.

Like said above, the "shortest" will be 1/4 wave, which, on 2m (VHF) is about 16" in length. I use the Larsen NMO2/70SH for clearance reasons. It works well enough, but the UHF is a 3/4 pattern, which has quite a bit of uptilt.

On my old vehicle, I had the remote head kit and I mounted it on one of those CD slot phone mounts. It worked ok for a non-permanent install.

Again, it it comes back to trying to regulate so that one cannot make a mistake, but it still happens to everyone. Even running a dedicated Part 95 approved radio for GMRS, grabbing the wrong mic and using the wrong call sign. The reason many of the newer Chinese radios over lock the firmware (only 1 repeater channel possible for each repeater frequency) is to keep you from using the radio outside of GMRS. Once you get away from CCRs and into real LMR equipment, you begin to see the benefit of zones and other features. MURS has no use to me, so I don't ever even listen, but I do listen to railroad while traveling. Zones can let you split up frequencies by location/service/etc. Build separate zones for GMRS and ham, then when you are scanning the zone, you only respond to ham or GMRS. My Harris radio will go even further, by holding multiple mission plans (on the fly changing of code plugs). I have 1 for amateur radio (with zones for each group of counties in the entire state), and 1 for work frequencies. Can't ever mix them up then, even with a bump of a button. I have issues with many of the cheap chinese radios and their performance overall. While technically just as wrong, using proper LMR radios with Part 90 certifications is less of a concern when used on GMRS. They technically meet all the performance criteria of Part 95, where as the CCR radios are a huge crap shoot if it meets, they just toss a different firmware and sticker on the radio. I know some meet specs, and they may have gotten better over the last few years, but after my experiences with front end overload of expensive CCRs, I've determined it's not worth the cost savings to deal with a marginal receiver (and possible out of spec radio), not to mention the other plusses of true LMR equipment.

I went the XTS/XTL2500 route, and then found out they took down all the 900 repeaters, one guy had 5 in the area and let the tower lease lapse due to lack of use.

I'd put money that neither is genuine: https://www.ameradio.com/product/101281/description.html

KMC-45D

Are you able to hear ok with the speakers under the rear seat? I mounted my Kenwood decks to the underside of the seat to keep them off the floor.

You need the antennas to be 25' apart, one directly over the other, to achieve the isolation of a duplexer. That is 25' from top of bottom antenna to bottom of top antenna. If they are not directly 1 over the other, you loose your isolation. For horizontal separation, you need 2000'+ apart to get the same isolation as vertical separation, or a duplexer. 40' apart and at slightly different elevations is not enough, you are getting desense, which is 1 reason you are getting no range out of the repeater. As for 30W vs 40W, the difference in the field is minimally noticed, you are still limited in range by height you get the repeater, not wattage. When figuring height for how far the repeater can reach, you need to use the bottom elevation of the bottom antenna.

The wrong steps will do that....... For what it's worth, my Kendwood D74 did receive air and ok, but it was significantly quieter than FM signals.

Airband is AM modulation, as opposed to FM modulation. AM can sound quite or appear to have an echo, but the reason it is used because you can hear two signals at the same time, as opposed to FM where one "wins" the battle for the air, and weak signal work is easier in AM. AM won't ever sound as clear as FM, with open and closing squelch. Also, you may or may not hear the pilots, since it's all simplex, not like monitoring a repeaters. Your sound issues might be related to antenna, or just bad sensitivity on the radio. The best AM reception radio I had was a FTM400, and it picked up the airport from quite a ways out. It could also just be the cheap speaker on the radio that doesn't respond well with AM.

There is already a GMRS repeater in Brunswick. Also look into Medina County ARES https://ohioares10.ad8g.net/medina/. It would probably be a good idea to not duplicate efforts/protocols to increase the chance of making meaningful contact. Perhaps reach out to see about including GMRS as a secondary line of communication.