WRFP399

Pretty sure you can just link your repeaters together but then you can also link into the myGMRS Network when you want.
 
I see a few repeater networks on the myGMRS Network map that don't routinely link into the regional hubs.
 
There are three nodes in Minnesota that are all linked. I link into them from time to time as well.

I don't know how it works in Canada but my basic understand of US law goes along the lines of "If it isn't expressly forbidden, it is allowed".
 

RT97 “Duty Cycle”
 
I had a replacement RT97 come in today as a replacement for one that failed. The prior failed as it would not longer talk to a computer for programming. The TX/RX worked fine. I decided to test this new units “duty cycle” and heat displacement abilities.
 
The first thing I did was open it up and see what it has internally to bridge the transmitter to the aluminum outer housing. The bottom of the RX/TX unit has large fins cast into its aluminum body. It appears to be bedded in thermal paste to make a conductive path the aluminum outer housing.
 
I took a food thermometer and put it into the thermal paste. The unit was at 70 degrees.
 
The “Test”:
 
Stage One: I had it transmitting on high power. The transmission was broken up into three 1 minute sections with 10 seconds between each followed by a whole 2 minutes of TX. The transmitter rose from 70 degrees to 82 degrees. Hardly warm to the touch. (12 degree rise for 5 min Total TX w/ 40 seconds rest)  
Stage Two: I gave it about 2 minutes of rest and hit it with two more sessions of 2 minutes transmissions, separated by 20 seconds. It had fallen to just below 80 prior to and rose to 89 after.(9 degree rise for 4 min Total TX, w/ 2 min 20 seconds rest)  
Stage Three: I finally let it sit for 1 minute and did five more sessions of 2 minutes transmissions, separated by 20 seconds. The temp started at 88 and rose to 102 (14 degree rise for 10 Min Total TX w/ 2 min 20 seconds rest)  
End total of 19 min of TX w/ 3 min 20 seconds of rest. The temp rose from 70 degrees to 102 degrees.
 
What I find interesting is that after the radio “warmed up” it took significantly more time to heat up further. I expected the 10 min spent TX'ing in Stage 3 to raise it more than it did. At the end after only about 60 seconds of rest it already had dropped to 94 degrees from a high of 102. I did not repeat this test on low power but I can only assume it would take longer to heat up.
 
Being as my use with these repeaters are outdoors here in Alaska it doesn’t appear that heat will be an issue for me. During the winter our avg daily temp is around 20 degrees and we only get to an avg daily temp of 60-65 in the summer. This leaves a lot of head room. The cooler ambient temperatures should further increase the rate of heat dissipation as my home was 70 degrees to start with. Anyone see any flaws with my logic?

The node 177 does link up with other area repeaters in the PacNW every other Tuesday. Today, 1-10-23, they will link up in the evening.

Your repeater works on its own just like it normally would. You transmit to it, it hears your transmission and repeats it. So local users can talk to local users.
When you attach and enable the linking bundle you can connect into a regional hub (177 for me in Alaska). Other linking users like yourself also connect to the regional hub. Anything that your repeater now hears is pushed out via the internet to the hub which distributes it to the other systems linked to it. Those other linked systems take the internet audio and transmit it out on their end for others to hear. Someone on that end can respond on their radio. Their signal goes into their repeater, to the link, to the hub, to your link, to your repeater which broadcasts it to your radio.
 

The Pi can be enabled to use Wifi to connect back to the internet. I have mine setup that way. Ethernet is probably more reliable. The RT97S that is available on this site is plug and play with the myGMRS net from what I understand.

https://shop.mygmrs.com/products/retevis-rt97s-portable-gmrs-repeater

 

It depends on your climate and how much use it will see. 

The RT97 draws about 2 amps on high power and .09 amps when in stand-by.

I am running an RT97 on solar power here in Alaska. During the summer when we have lots of sun a 9 amp hour battery and 30 watt panel do just fine. Everytime I checked on it the battery was at 100% capacity. During the winter we have a few issues that make it more difficult. During winter solstice there is only around 4 hours of sunlight.  We also have cold weather to deal with. Drop a lead acid battery to around 0 degrees F and you are down to around 80% of its capacity. Last winter I had it running on a 30 watt panel and a 14 amp hour battery. It wasn't enough. By November the battery was already being run down to the cut off voltage of 11.2 volts. 75% of last November the repeater was down. We didn't have enough snow to prevent me from getting to the site so I was able to get to it and swap it battery out for a 9 amp hour one I had. Yes it is smaller but I wanted to save the larger, more expensive, battery from damage. It lasted for about a week before going down again. I would come back up after a week or two for a few days and then go down again. From there it only got worse. The solar controller shut down the repeater for the majority of winter. Low voltage and cold temperatures resulted in a frozen battery sometime between December and February. Once frozen the voltage dropped to near zero and the solar controller shut down completely. My repeater site is inaccessible once winter sets in due to snow level and steep grades.

This spring I changed a few things. Keep in mind all my components need to be hiked up to about 2400 feet by hand. The components had to fit in or attach to a backpack or two.

POWER GENERATION:
This spring I added a 50 watt panel. This brought up the solar power to 80 watts total. The 80 watts of panels should generate enough solar energy on a 4 hour cloudy day to replace the 2.2-ish amps that the RT97 uses while in stand-by for 24 hours. I based this on monitoring the output of the panels on an overcast day this summer. I waited until the sun's elevation (as informed by a smartphone app) matched that it in the winter and saw the battery being charged at a rate of about 800 milliamps.  4 hours at 800 is 3.2 amps.  That is 1 extra amp...in theory. 
POWER STORAGE:
I upgraded to a 35 amp hour battery and put it underground by over a foot. Just being a foot underground shields the battery from the extreme highs and lows. At that depth theory says it should be at the avg daily temperature. If this setup works through the winter I am relocating the repeater to an even more remote location and will try to get the battery further down. Being underground also has the benefit of keeping the battery cool in the summer, which in theory, should prolong it's life. This 35 amp hour battery chould, in theory, keep the repeater running in stand-by mode for about 13 days or it could support about 14 hours of non-stop transmission in the winter with ZERO solar input. This factors in a 20% reduction in capacity due to cold temperatures.

With these two upgrades the battery should really never be run low unless we have significant activity on the repeater without any days of decent solar generation. The larger battery helps store "extra" power from the sunny days and/or the additional hours of overcast days before/after winter solstice. This keeps the battery at a higher level of charge. Being kept at high charger levels and buried underground protect it through the colds snaps. 

Since I implemented the changes the repeater has been running 24/7. The past several weeks have been COLD here. The avg daily temperature as been between -5 and 5 degrees fahrenheit. Lows have been down below -20 degrees. For the past two weeks I have connected into the myGMRS national net for about 4 hours on Sundays. This has resulted in about 3 to 4 hours worth of transmission time each Sunday on the repeater as people talk across the nation. So far the battery appears to be doing fine as the repeater has not gone down. Hours of sunlight will continue to decrease through December at which point it will start picking up again. The skies will also start to be clear of clouds more often as we push past mid winter. 

So for me, it looks like 80 watts of solar power and a 35 amp hour battery are needed but again that is due to cold winter conditions with low sun levels. I don't know where you are but if you are in the lower 48 I would say the system could be more like my first attempt, 30 watts solar and a 9 amp hour battery and I would bet a 50 watt solar and 14 amp hour battery would give some extra head room.

I have a few other posts up detailing my experiences with the RT97. If you register you can browse them.

Solar Panel:  
https://www.amazon.com/Renogy-Monocrystalline-Efficiency-Charging-Applications/dp/B07GTH79JP/ref=sr_1_4?crid=2OBPM6JH5RIF2&keywords=50%2Bwatt%2Bsolar%2Bpanel%2Brenogy&qid=1637621917&sprefix=50%2Bwatts%2Bsolar%2Bpanel%2Breno%2Caps%2C318&sr=8-4&th=1

Solar Controller:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Q79TC2L?ref=nb_sb_ss_w_as-ypp-ro-model_ypp_ro_model_k0_1_10&crid=LSOHLRTW8QW2&sprefix=10+amp+sol
 
Battery:
https://www.batteriesplus.com/productdetails/slaa12=35c


Battery-S-12330.pdf

My plan involves nothing more than Cellular Voice for primary communication with Wifi/Cellular Data for Alternate Use. GMRS for Contingency and 2M/70CM HAM for Emergency Use to supplement my GMRS as the 2M mountain top repeaters were are **WIDE** coverage and have backup power. We are talking 4000+ plus feet AGL. My plan involves communication for the "local" area which is around 30 miles. This is easily accomplished with my solar recharged Retevis RT97 on a mountainside. Now family and friends just pick up and turn on a HT. Due to geography here it works well. .

Most of this was fueled by the Cellular net becoming overloaded during our Earthquake in 2018. That illustrated a real world need for local comms between family and friends.

I don't really care about extreme long range comms through HF as we are so cut off here it doesn't really matter to me. If the world got to a point where our comms were down for so long that the only way to reach outside of Alaska is HF I have so many other more important things to deal with than speaking with the lower 48. Push come to shove, there are enough HAM's here that I could just find one.
 
Solar is what I obviously chose for these low power needs.

The node 177 does link up with other area repeaters in the PacNW every other Tuesday. Today, 1-10-23, they will link up in the evening.

It snowed and I never got back up to it but it's is now the end of March and I can update on the performance.
 
The repeater stayed up 24/7 until around the beginning of January where low total solar hours due to reduced daylight and consistent clouds resulted a "low" battery state. The solar controller shut down the repeater when it saw a sustained voltage of 12.1 or lower. During this time we had nearly all cloudy days continuing through the start of February. The few sunny days we had the controller would turn the repeater back on after about 20 minutes of getting full sun on it's panel. We were only getting single days of sun with many days/weeks of clouds between. With the low solar hours from the high latitude a single day was only making enough power to keep the repeater running for about a day during January before the battery ran "low" again and the solar control shut the repeater back off. This would increase to about 2 or 3 days worth of power by February with the increase in the length of solar hours per day. It was good to see the solar controller doing it's job consistently protecting the battery while also consistently bringing everything back up in -20 degree weather provided it had enough sun. By late February we had 5 days of full sun in a row and significantly increased daily solar hours. The repeater has since has been up 24/7 since then. I have head multiple new GMRS members exploring it's RF footprint the past few days. Once the several feet of snow melts and the mud subsides I will try and post a reading of the data on the solar controller.
 
I know this post is super long but I think it contains useful data for anyone else looking to make a solar charged repeater with a small physical footprint.

So I live in the mountains here in Alaska. I have found that GMRS signals (UHF) do very well at moving down the deep valleys flanked by tall/steep mountains. I assumed this is reflection/refraction. I can also confirm that GMRS (UHF) signals get chewed up by heavy forest.   Further to that point, there is a commercial UHF passive "repeater" on a ridge behind my home. It is just a large flat metal "billboard".
 
In my experience being in the mountains and away from urban areas "increases" the performance of the radio through better signal to noise ratios. Urban areas tend to drown out weaker signals but out in the back country were there is less RF noise that weak signal comes through strong.
 

Probably, but at this point the RF was put under control by the ferrite and I needed an IP67 weather resistance.

Yes. The "Beta Version 3" is powered by a 60 watt panel (~33 volts at 2 amps) hooked up to an Epever Tracer MPPT controller rated to -40 degrees. I have two of these controllers running this winter. They seem to work fine in the Alaska winter. Downside is these MPPT circuits are louder RF wise than the PWM. I don't claim to be an expert on that but I found the controller was making RF noise when the sun was GONE and was quiet when the sun was present. I thought the opposite would be true but it wasn't. I was able to quiet it down with Mix 61 ferrites on all the outputs/inputs of the controller. 

It snowed and I never got back up to it but it's is now the end of March and I can update on the performance.
 
The repeater stayed up 24/7 until around the beginning of January where low total solar hours due to reduced daylight and consistent clouds resulted a "low" battery state. The solar controller shut down the repeater when it saw a sustained voltage of 12.1 or lower. During this time we had nearly all cloudy days continuing through the start of February. The few sunny days we had the controller would turn the repeater back on after about 20 minutes of getting full sun on it's panel. We were only getting single days of sun with many days/weeks of clouds between. With the low solar hours from the high latitude a single day was only making enough power to keep the repeater running for about a day during January before the battery ran "low" again and the solar control shut the repeater back off. This would increase to about 2 or 3 days worth of power by February with the increase in the length of solar hours per day. It was good to see the solar controller doing it's job consistently protecting the battery while also consistently bringing everything back up in -20 degree weather provided it had enough sun. By late February we had 5 days of full sun in a row and significantly increased daily solar hours. The repeater has since has been up 24/7 since then. I have head multiple new GMRS members exploring it's RF footprint the past few days. Once the several feet of snow melts and the mud subsides I will try and post a reading of the data on the solar controller.
 
I know this post is super long but I think it contains useful data for anyone else looking to make a solar charged repeater with a small physical footprint.

It snowed and I never got back up to it but it's is now the end of March and I can update on the performance.
 
The repeater stayed up 24/7 until around the beginning of January where low total solar hours due to reduced daylight and consistent clouds resulted a "low" battery state. The solar controller shut down the repeater when it saw a sustained voltage of 12.1 or lower. During this time we had nearly all cloudy days continuing through the start of February. The few sunny days we had the controller would turn the repeater back on after about 20 minutes of getting full sun on it's panel. We were only getting single days of sun with many days/weeks of clouds between. With the low solar hours from the high latitude a single day was only making enough power to keep the repeater running for about a day during January before the battery ran "low" again and the solar control shut the repeater back off. This would increase to about 2 or 3 days worth of power by February with the increase in the length of solar hours per day. It was good to see the solar controller doing it's job consistently protecting the battery while also consistently bringing everything back up in -20 degree weather provided it had enough sun. By late February we had 5 days of full sun in a row and significantly increased daily solar hours. The repeater has since has been up 24/7 since then. I have head multiple new GMRS members exploring it's RF footprint the past few days. Once the several feet of snow melts and the mud subsides I will try and post a reading of the data on the solar controller.
 
I know this post is super long but I think it contains useful data for anyone else looking to make a solar charged repeater with a small physical footprint.

It snowed and I never got back up to it but it's is now the end of March and I can update on the performance.
 
The repeater stayed up 24/7 until around the beginning of January where low total solar hours due to reduced daylight and consistent clouds resulted a "low" battery state. The solar controller shut down the repeater when it saw a sustained voltage of 12.1 or lower. During this time we had nearly all cloudy days continuing through the start of February. The few sunny days we had the controller would turn the repeater back on after about 20 minutes of getting full sun on it's panel. We were only getting single days of sun with many days/weeks of clouds between. With the low solar hours from the high latitude a single day was only making enough power to keep the repeater running for about a day during January before the battery ran "low" again and the solar control shut the repeater back off. This would increase to about 2 or 3 days worth of power by February with the increase in the length of solar hours per day. It was good to see the solar controller doing it's job consistently protecting the battery while also consistently bringing everything back up in -20 degree weather provided it had enough sun. By late February we had 5 days of full sun in a row and significantly increased daily solar hours. The repeater has since has been up 24/7 since then. I have head multiple new GMRS members exploring it's RF footprint the past few days. Once the several feet of snow melts and the mud subsides I will try and post a reading of the data on the solar controller.
 
I know this post is super long but I think it contains useful data for anyone else looking to make a solar charged repeater with a small physical footprint.

I try to avoid lithium in my pancake batter as well (unless my guests are bi-polar!) ?

It snowed and I never got back up to it but it's is now the end of March and I can update on the performance.
 
The repeater stayed up 24/7 until around the beginning of January where low total solar hours due to reduced daylight and consistent clouds resulted a "low" battery state. The solar controller shut down the repeater when it saw a sustained voltage of 12.1 or lower. During this time we had nearly all cloudy days continuing through the start of February. The few sunny days we had the controller would turn the repeater back on after about 20 minutes of getting full sun on it's panel. We were only getting single days of sun with many days/weeks of clouds between. With the low solar hours from the high latitude a single day was only making enough power to keep the repeater running for about a day during January before the battery ran "low" again and the solar control shut the repeater back off. This would increase to about 2 or 3 days worth of power by February with the increase in the length of solar hours per day. It was good to see the solar controller doing it's job consistently protecting the battery while also consistently bringing everything back up in -20 degree weather provided it had enough sun. By late February we had 5 days of full sun in a row and significantly increased daily solar hours. The repeater has since has been up 24/7 since then. I have head multiple new GMRS members exploring it's RF footprint the past few days. Once the several feet of snow melts and the mud subsides I will try and post a reading of the data on the solar controller.
 
I know this post is super long but I think it contains useful data for anyone else looking to make a solar charged repeater with a small physical footprint.

It snowed and I never got back up to it but it's is now the end of March and I can update on the performance.
 
The repeater stayed up 24/7 until around the beginning of January where low total solar hours due to reduced daylight and consistent clouds resulted a "low" battery state. The solar controller shut down the repeater when it saw a sustained voltage of 12.1 or lower. During this time we had nearly all cloudy days continuing through the start of February. The few sunny days we had the controller would turn the repeater back on after about 20 minutes of getting full sun on it's panel. We were only getting single days of sun with many days/weeks of clouds between. With the low solar hours from the high latitude a single day was only making enough power to keep the repeater running for about a day during January before the battery ran "low" again and the solar control shut the repeater back off. This would increase to about 2 or 3 days worth of power by February with the increase in the length of solar hours per day. It was good to see the solar controller doing it's job consistently protecting the battery while also consistently bringing everything back up in -20 degree weather provided it had enough sun. By late February we had 5 days of full sun in a row and significantly increased daily solar hours. The repeater has since has been up 24/7 since then. I have head multiple new GMRS members exploring it's RF footprint the past few days. Once the several feet of snow melts and the mud subsides I will try and post a reading of the data on the solar controller.
 
I know this post is super long but I think it contains useful data for anyone else looking to make a solar charged repeater with a small physical footprint.

It snowed and I never got back up to it but it's is now the end of March and I can update on the performance.
 
The repeater stayed up 24/7 until around the beginning of January where low total solar hours due to reduced daylight and consistent clouds resulted a "low" battery state. The solar controller shut down the repeater when it saw a sustained voltage of 12.1 or lower. During this time we had nearly all cloudy days continuing through the start of February. The few sunny days we had the controller would turn the repeater back on after about 20 minutes of getting full sun on it's panel. We were only getting single days of sun with many days/weeks of clouds between. With the low solar hours from the high latitude a single day was only making enough power to keep the repeater running for about a day during January before the battery ran "low" again and the solar control shut the repeater back off. This would increase to about 2 or 3 days worth of power by February with the increase in the length of solar hours per day. It was good to see the solar controller doing it's job consistently protecting the battery while also consistently bringing everything back up in -20 degree weather provided it had enough sun. By late February we had 5 days of full sun in a row and significantly increased daily solar hours. The repeater has since has been up 24/7 since then. I have head multiple new GMRS members exploring it's RF footprint the past few days. Once the several feet of snow melts and the mud subsides I will try and post a reading of the data on the solar controller.
 
I know this post is super long but I think it contains useful data for anyone else looking to make a solar charged repeater with a small physical footprint.

I think by far the simplest "rugged" option would be a Vertex VX-231. While these aren't water/dust proof I have beat the snot out of mine over the last 15 years or so. I started using these radios back in the late 2000s for paintball. Rain, snow, mud, dust, getting hit with paintballs and they all stood up fine. I now use them along with Vertex EVX-531/534 radios for hiking and backcountry communication. They are cheap and work well. The receivers in them are far better than any of my Chinese radios. They are up to 16 channels but any channel slot not programmed will cause the radio to beep at you to let you know that channel is not programmed. Aftermarket batteries are still available for it, including extended run time batteries that will last up to 50 hours in stand-by. The programming cables you can get on eBay for 20 bucks do work for programming but won't for firmware upgrades. If you want the ability to upgrade firmware you need the Vertex FIF cable which is about $150. Upgrading firmware really isn't that important.  I have the programming software I can send to you if you need it. I attached a screen shot showing what a single channel programming might look like.

 

 

I think by far the simplest "rugged" option would be a Vertex VX-231. While these aren't water/dust proof I have beat the snot out of mine over the last 15 years or so. I started using these radios back in the late 2000s for paintball. Rain, snow, mud, dust, getting hit with paintballs and they all stood up fine. I now use them along with Vertex EVX-531/534 radios for hiking and backcountry communication. They are cheap and work well. The receivers in them are far better than any of my Chinese radios. They are up to 16 channels but any channel slot not programmed will cause the radio to beep at you to let you know that channel is not programmed. Aftermarket batteries are still available for it, including extended run time batteries that will last up to 50 hours in stand-by. The programming cables you can get on eBay for 20 bucks do work for programming but won't for firmware upgrades. If you want the ability to upgrade firmware you need the Vertex FIF cable which is about $150. Upgrading firmware really isn't that important.  I have the programming software I can send to you if you need it. I attached a screen shot showing what a single channel programming might look like.

 

 

I think I will try to connect into the 177 about mid or late February. Need the additional solar hours to recover the battery. The repeater has been popping on and off line as the battery is low.  At least this year I can say it has been reliably coming back on-line. All prior years it went down and never came back up.

I think first you need to register. When I did I just used my call sign as my username.

I think I will try to connect into the 177 about mid or late February. Need the additional solar hours to recover the battery. The repeater has been popping on and off line as the battery is low.  At least this year I can say it has been reliably coming back on-line. All prior years it went down and never came back up.

It looks like the myGMRS node 177 "formalized" and separated itself from the mid-west 169 node.  A fair amount of nodes and repeaters popped up in the PacNW. They hold a simple check in net every 2 weeks on Tuesdays at 6PM Alaska Time.  They call for people to check in state by state including Alaska. They usually just ask for your Callsign, first name and what you are talking on (IE a handheld with 5 watts or a mobile radio with 15 watts etc).  At the end they open it up to general convo but usually there is none.

I make every attempt to connect into this net using the EagleRiver 575 repeater. The last one was 11-15-2022 and the next will be 11-29-2022. 
 
Here is the audio from 11-15-2022 when there were only a few people. 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/19nlg_xlVQhvwjVHga7N08XYHHke9oseb/view?usp=share_link