tweiss3

Comet GP6NC is listed for GMRS & MURS, but out of curiosity I swept it last night and it is pretty decent on the 2m ham band. On 70cm ham, its over 2.1 across the board. 3 of 4 isn't too bad. Below is the 2m sweep from 120MHz to 160MHz.

I don't know. I've heard of stories where Texas ran an out of state plate (MN I think) and ran it incorrectly, and it came back to a guy with warrants for armed robbery. Of course, there was a small number prefix on the plate that wasn't used when they ran it, and after a felony stop and some checking everyone laughed and went on their separate ways. Seeing some other things on youtube, CA not running their own vanity/ham plates correctly isn't that far fetched.

Makes sense to me. It appears that the Quantars have more shielding to them though. Probably why they can be stacked 10 high in a big system and not interfere with each other.

This may be the case, I have no personal experience with this specific repeater, but when my Kenwood was on the bench, the second it flipped into service mode, and the oscillator was turned on, all radios on that frequency in the room picked up the carrier, even without the PA being on.

This sounds like classic desense, the HT in the room used to key up the repeater overpowers what the receiving handheld gets, and you hear nothing. If you could get the two HTs apart by 20' or more, try it again.

Yes, like microwave, except you don't need a license, they are designed as network extenders, except they can go miles and miles.

I think you have two options for RF linking. Though you do mention that LOS is troublesome for some RX sites, but you can do GMRS linking via simplex, but then you fall under the definition of fixed station and are limited to 15 watts. The second option would be IP linking over RF (using commercial dishes with type acceptance) but that is 100% LOS driven.

I think that all the multi-site multi-receive systems (ham, not commercial) around here are linked via RF. You could do IP link, but use 5GHz Ubiquity dishes to link, instead of public ISP. If I knew of a successful one to reference, I would send you that direction. The simulcast/statewide systems typically have fiber connections, GPS sync, high stability XO and plenty of other things going on. It is also a bit more simple since they are digital trunking as well, I would think analog could be significantly more complicated. You could try reaching out to the guys of the big F2 repeater system, I think it's RF linked, but they have 17 receive sites online at the moment, they should be of some help.

I have LiFePo batteries, and they have been worth every penny. I thought of going solar, but just one of my LiFePo batteries will run the IC-705 for just over 48 hours at a continuous 50/50 duty cycle. I sized it for running full FieldDay on a single batter charge. I figure if there is an emergency situation, and if I can't make that work along with the other handhelds, batteries and cars, then there is a lot more problems we are about to have.

Exactly, and with a high profile site, can provide 17+ additional miles of usable range (that goes for any digital FM mode).

Hardline, like Heilax.

Yea, I run the 2/70B and it is very very tall, but at this point I'm not switching it back out for the 2/70SH. I will go back to the 2/70SH when I swap trucks and go permanent mount. I don't notice a ton of picket fencing on my side though, some say it happens when I'm in the valley, which makes sense, but its still fully copyable.

Everyone has an opinion on what is worth the effort, lightening, etc.... Keep in mind, there is a standard, the National Electrical Code, as well as the possibility of local building codes. I would recommend you start there as the minimum standard, which isn't too difficult or expensive to achieve. Also keep in the back of your head, should you decided to do an install that is not compliant with the code, and something does happen, insurances and/or code officials can make your life a living nightmare.

Do you have all all ports of the duplexer terminated? Never forget to place a dummy load or another radio on the unused port (hi/low), otherwise the duplexer creates and unbalanced system and won't give you proper answers.

You can get pretty darn close (much closer than it is now) with a NanoVNA, a few jumper cables and two dummy loads.

Other than the swap of a memory chip on the board, the rest is all software based changes. I highly doubt they changed anything else, there actually was only a memory change between the 868 and the 878, and the plus only meant they included the Bluetooth board. I use bluetooth quite often. With the Motorola gear, I use it with the PMLN7851A, which looks just like a standard hands free earpiece for your phone. On the Kenwood stuff, I use BT for wireless programming, its quicker than with the cable. The external PTT required on the 878 was annoying as well.

I have the 878+, from what I understand, the only difference is number of channels and number of contacts. I know it's controversial, but nobody needs the entire DMR-ID database in their radio. I stopped using the contact list all together, with the exception of 5 individuals.

Gland you are enjoying it. For the money, it does appear on paper to check all the boxes. I was not impressed with the analog capability, and often experienced front end overload. It was even replaced by bridgecom with no improvement. Digital monitor mode is more of a gimmick feature, not that it doesn't work, but I never had the need for it. I've always felt if you need that feature, you didn't do your recon work before hand. It also doesn't do proper DMR roaming, which both Kenwood and Motorola do very very well. I too spent too much recently, but I'm going to end up spending a bit more this weekend, hopefully to finish this permeant repeater install at the house.

I suppose GMRS could be used for community events, but I don't see it happening around here. A ham friend nearby has the local neighborhood watch on GMRS, and they do talk to each other all the time.

Why? I'm half and half on DMR for GMRS, but when you sit down and think about it, DMR would allow for better co-use of a single repeater pair, with the added bonus of better coverage and other tools that quite frankly would be used in our house.

I think the ID-O-Matic doe that.

This is probably a good idea to start out. The XTS/XTL are excellent radios, but the are end of life, and you can really confuse yourself finding the exact model you need with the correct flashcode (Motorola code for features enabled). The nice thing about the XTS/XTL, you can set an entire zone for the GMRS frequencies, and enable MPL (or user selectable tone) which will allow you to change it on the fly, but you have to program each possible PL for RX & TX, and name it appropriately. It does cap out at 60 pairs.

That makes sense. Yes, on the APX line they do have multibands. You will likely spend your entire $2500 budget. Fortunately, the APX CPS is free now, and you are able to get wideband entitlements from Motorola.

Moto XPR7550 does not come in dual band, but you can get both VHF and UHF. Kenwood NX-5700/5800 is similar, one deck for each band, but you can stack the decks into a single head. A dad mount (not remote mount, single deck) is about $900 new. Remote kit is about $350/450. Should be right at your $2500 for UHF + VHF with analog and NXDN. FPP is $130/deck. Caveat on the IHF is any FPP reverts to narrow band, but the VHF supposedly doesn't. I'm on the waiting list for a 5800K2 that should be coming soon. You can do OST (operator selectable tone) and setup a table of 40 options. You could add DMD or P25 to each deck as well, P25 is the most expensive entitlement though.