quarterwave

Since I often see posts from people thinking out loud, or whom just got a license and got into radio, proposing to do some brand-new wild and crazy idea that will shock the world..... 
There is little new and shocking about how and what we can do with radio, both in HAM and GMRS. It's all been tried in one way or another. Now, that's not discouragement, but so many wild ideas get a critical response when the wild eyed newbies and inexperienced folks get to thinking with a keyboard.
How about we proactively talk about unique setups or experiments we may done or seen.
This way when Cleetus wants to link 17 repeaters in 4 square miles with MURS and CB channels, maybe he won't get run over by the radio police. He'll know that's not right, and won't work, at least within the rules. 
So if you have multiple repeaters, remote receivers, wireline controls, RF linked repeaters, poor mans LTR (AKA - PL scanning) or some other unique setup, we'd love to hear about it, how it is setup and if it works well. 

The sarcasm is strong with this one. 
There is probably alot of sideways stuff going on out there, but there are perfectly legit setups too. 
I've worked in commercial telecom and part 90 for over 30 years, sometimes the most unique solutions seem out of bounds, then all the haters have to peel their foot out of their mouths when they can't prove it is.
I figure a collection of interesting experiments or setups to read about is way better than 9,000 random posts by newbies with the big new idea of the day. 

If everyone is running good equipment, it should be fine. 
I've been in tight commercial sites where there were 5-6 UHF repeaters within 2MHz of each other. And VHF to contend with. 
If the filtering is good, you're ok. 

Going back to one of my old experiences when I worked for Motorola years ago...
A small city police department had a failure of their old GE repeater they had been nursing along for many years, so they needed a new one. Budgets were tight, but they insisted on a 100 watt unit. Now, the repeater was naturally on a hill, on a water tank, and was at the highest point in the city, and no more than a mile from the city limits in any direction. They wanted 100 watts. VHF, carrier squelch mind you...and 100 watts. 
While they waited for a new repeater, we loaned them a Desktrac (not what you need for public safety, but it'll work in a pinch). 
Once on the air, the asst chief said, man, that sounds good. And the range is great, can we just keep that one? Is it 100 watts? 
Sure, it's 100 watts. 
It was in fact 25 watts..... no one could tell. They later got a new repeater, but we still didn't set it up for 100 watts. 
Point is, don't get hung up on wattage, use what works for the situation you need it in. 

A quarter wave antenna pattern looks much like a round ball. A gain antenna pattern takes more the shape of a football, or even an exaggerated football (ellipse). 
I've never gone wrong performance wise with a 1/4 wave... in UHF, VHF, 800... 
Nothing against the gainers, they have their place.
Just an observation, but usually I see HAM radio (I am a HAM too) using gain antennae because we try to do the most with the least power. Commercial and GMRS largely used fixed power (even though there are adjustable power GMRS radios now) and many times have more power than they really need, so any marginal effect of a higher gain antenna is not seen or even known. That's an opinion, don't anyone get sideways.  

A quarter wave antenna pattern looks much like a round ball. A gain antenna pattern takes more the shape of a football, or even an exaggerated football (ellipse). 
I've never gone wrong performance wise with a 1/4 wave... in UHF, VHF, 800... 
Nothing against the gainers, they have their place.
Just an observation, but usually I see HAM radio (I am a HAM too) using gain antennae because we try to do the most with the least power. Commercial and GMRS largely used fixed power (even though there are adjustable power GMRS radios now) and many times have more power than they really need, so any marginal effect of a higher gain antenna is not seen or even known. That's an opinion, don't anyone get sideways.  

A quarter wave antenna pattern looks much like a round ball. A gain antenna pattern takes more the shape of a football, or even an exaggerated football (ellipse). 
I've never gone wrong performance wise with a 1/4 wave... in UHF, VHF, 800... 
Nothing against the gainers, they have their place.
Just an observation, but usually I see HAM radio (I am a HAM too) using gain antennae because we try to do the most with the least power. Commercial and GMRS largely used fixed power (even though there are adjustable power GMRS radios now) and many times have more power than they really need, so any marginal effect of a higher gain antenna is not seen or even known. That's an opinion, don't anyone get sideways.  

A quarter wave antenna pattern looks much like a round ball. A gain antenna pattern takes more the shape of a football, or even an exaggerated football (ellipse). 
I've never gone wrong performance wise with a 1/4 wave... in UHF, VHF, 800... 
Nothing against the gainers, they have their place.
Just an observation, but usually I see HAM radio (I am a HAM too) using gain antennae because we try to do the most with the least power. Commercial and GMRS largely used fixed power (even though there are adjustable power GMRS radios now) and many times have more power than they really need, so any marginal effect of a higher gain antenna is not seen or even known. That's an opinion, don't anyone get sideways.  

A quarter wave antenna pattern looks much like a round ball. A gain antenna pattern takes more the shape of a football, or even an exaggerated football (ellipse). 
I've never gone wrong performance wise with a 1/4 wave... in UHF, VHF, 800... 
Nothing against the gainers, they have their place.
Just an observation, but usually I see HAM radio (I am a HAM too) using gain antennae because we try to do the most with the least power. Commercial and GMRS largely used fixed power (even though there are adjustable power GMRS radios now) and many times have more power than they really need, so any marginal effect of a higher gain antenna is not seen or even known. That's an opinion, don't anyone get sideways.  

I run a MTR2000 with a Zetron. 
There is hang time, which is the time after proper carrier AND PL is lost, that the transmitter remains on air. It is used to keep the carrier up so another person can respond without any re-keying time. I set mine to 6 seconds. In my area alot of Ham repeaters have a long hang time. It's ok to not use it at all, but with a 100% duty cycle repeater, I'd rather have it.
Then...there is tone in tail. Your carrier in hang time can transmit the PL or not. You can drop the PL and the carrier will stay up for the duration, but receiving radios (programmed with the output tone) will close their squelch. 
I also use the Zetron input carrier beep, which is a medium "beep" when a carrier drops. This helps people tell if a unit is on the fringe of coverage and their actual signal is weak or just their audio. It helps the non radio people learn repeater-ese. 

Same Input PL's on both repeaters? How about swapping antennae, if they are in same site. Maybe put a temp antenna on the new one and see if it acts the same.

Going back to one of my old experiences when I worked for Motorola years ago...
A small city police department had a failure of their old GE repeater they had been nursing along for many years, so they needed a new one. Budgets were tight, but they insisted on a 100 watt unit. Now, the repeater was naturally on a hill, on a water tank, and was at the highest point in the city, and no more than a mile from the city limits in any direction. They wanted 100 watts. VHF, carrier squelch mind you...and 100 watts. 
While they waited for a new repeater, we loaned them a Desktrac (not what you need for public safety, but it'll work in a pinch). 
Once on the air, the asst chief said, man, that sounds good. And the range is great, can we just keep that one? Is it 100 watts? 
Sure, it's 100 watts. 
It was in fact 25 watts..... no one could tell. They later got a new repeater, but we still didn't set it up for 100 watts. 
Point is, don't get hung up on wattage, use what works for the situation you need it in. 

Going back to one of my old experiences when I worked for Motorola years ago...
A small city police department had a failure of their old GE repeater they had been nursing along for many years, so they needed a new one. Budgets were tight, but they insisted on a 100 watt unit. Now, the repeater was naturally on a hill, on a water tank, and was at the highest point in the city, and no more than a mile from the city limits in any direction. They wanted 100 watts. VHF, carrier squelch mind you...and 100 watts. 
While they waited for a new repeater, we loaned them a Desktrac (not what you need for public safety, but it'll work in a pinch). 
Once on the air, the asst chief said, man, that sounds good. And the range is great, can we just keep that one? Is it 100 watts? 
Sure, it's 100 watts. 
It was in fact 25 watts..... no one could tell. They later got a new repeater, but we still didn't set it up for 100 watts. 
Point is, don't get hung up on wattage, use what works for the situation you need it in. 

Going back to one of my old experiences when I worked for Motorola years ago...
A small city police department had a failure of their old GE repeater they had been nursing along for many years, so they needed a new one. Budgets were tight, but they insisted on a 100 watt unit. Now, the repeater was naturally on a hill, on a water tank, and was at the highest point in the city, and no more than a mile from the city limits in any direction. They wanted 100 watts. VHF, carrier squelch mind you...and 100 watts. 
While they waited for a new repeater, we loaned them a Desktrac (not what you need for public safety, but it'll work in a pinch). 
Once on the air, the asst chief said, man, that sounds good. And the range is great, can we just keep that one? Is it 100 watts? 
Sure, it's 100 watts. 
It was in fact 25 watts..... no one could tell. They later got a new repeater, but we still didn't set it up for 100 watts. 
Point is, don't get hung up on wattage, use what works for the situation you need it in. 

Going back to one of my old experiences when I worked for Motorola years ago...
A small city police department had a failure of their old GE repeater they had been nursing along for many years, so they needed a new one. Budgets were tight, but they insisted on a 100 watt unit. Now, the repeater was naturally on a hill, on a water tank, and was at the highest point in the city, and no more than a mile from the city limits in any direction. They wanted 100 watts. VHF, carrier squelch mind you...and 100 watts. 
While they waited for a new repeater, we loaned them a Desktrac (not what you need for public safety, but it'll work in a pinch). 
Once on the air, the asst chief said, man, that sounds good. And the range is great, can we just keep that one? Is it 100 watts? 
Sure, it's 100 watts. 
It was in fact 25 watts..... no one could tell. They later got a new repeater, but we still didn't set it up for 100 watts. 
Point is, don't get hung up on wattage, use what works for the situation you need it in. 

Going back to one of my old experiences when I worked for Motorola years ago...
A small city police department had a failure of their old GE repeater they had been nursing along for many years, so they needed a new one. Budgets were tight, but they insisted on a 100 watt unit. Now, the repeater was naturally on a hill, on a water tank, and was at the highest point in the city, and no more than a mile from the city limits in any direction. They wanted 100 watts. VHF, carrier squelch mind you...and 100 watts. 
While they waited for a new repeater, we loaned them a Desktrac (not what you need for public safety, but it'll work in a pinch). 
Once on the air, the asst chief said, man, that sounds good. And the range is great, can we just keep that one? Is it 100 watts? 
Sure, it's 100 watts. 
It was in fact 25 watts..... no one could tell. They later got a new repeater, but we still didn't set it up for 100 watts. 
Point is, don't get hung up on wattage, use what works for the situation you need it in. 

The narrow band won't help with spectrum efficiency unless the FCC was going to add more channels to GMRS, which likely won't happen.
The channel interference part is beneficial. There are some interstitial channels that can cause interference to the adjacent main channels. If all of the channels were made narrow band the guard band between them would be greater.
The down side to narrow band is the range reduction. Many Part 90 users found that out quickly when the FCC mandated narrow band for that service group.
Be careful what you wish for.

Those Midland/Retevis repeaters have a very small internal duplexer that can barely create any decent isolation when the repeater is cranking more than 5 watts.
There is no magic bullet. You are never going to find a good, cheap, compact duplexer that passes 95% of your transmitter power and still gives you 90+ dB of isolation. It doesn't exist.
Every rookie with a wattmeter wants to get the MAXIMUM possible output power out of their repeater. I mean, 50 has to be better than 5, right?  In my opinion, the MOST important spec in a repeater system is the isolation between transmit and receive. Especially if you're using portable radios out in the field that can talk back in with 4 or 5 watts of transmit power. 
What good is it to key up your repeater with 10 or 15 watts of power when you introduce 3 or 4 dB of desense into the system? 3dB of desense on the receiver just made your 4 watt portable into a 2 watt portable, and how well is that going to work?
Better isolation = a better repeater.
Want to have a cheap repeater? You will get what you paid for. Cheap is rarely good.
 

Just a note I thought of as I a looked at repeater updates this week... 
Whether you are an experienced radio guru, know enough to be dangerous. or a beginner, keep this in mind about repeaters: 
If you put up the highest gain antenna you can find, the biggest low loss transmission line and set your power out to get right on 50 out of the tx cans of the duplexer, and score a site 1500 feet AAT....the question is, how much do I need? 
If your best radio, or a user on your repeater, his best radio can get in from a maximum of, say 10 miles out, but your repeater can be heard for 50 miles...you might be overdoing it. Not only that, you might be keeping another GMRS-er from being able to use the frequency elsewhere if there is crowding, even if your tone is different. Remember, it's a user coordinated service, it's up to us to share. 
I once had a customer who had a 125 Watt VHF repeater, and on a good day his reliable coverage was 30 miles with mobiles, 40 miles if you were knowledgeable. You could hear it for 150 miles depending on where you were that far out. We turned it down to 75 watts and they never knew a difference. 
So, just my opinion, but I do believe in the ham theory that you only need as much power as it takes, no more. 
-
 

It's not a real question if you intend to run a real, reliable repeater. Some loss is part of the game. Good equipment reduces that issue.
I setup a split repeater once, antennae were separated by 150' horizonally, and about 30 feet vertically. Just a pain in the ass to maintain, and still needed a can on the receive side. 
You don't have to buy a $10k repeater setup, but going cheap will result in cheap operation.  

I am not speaking for Randy... but I agree it's not for everyone.  The are large, get hot, have more than enough power and programing capability to get you in trouble (if the FCC ever starts enforcing the rules).  You could legit get a surplus radio that wasn't decommissioned correctly or not at all and all of a sudden you can find yourself on Fire, Police or some federal agencies digital encryption system and a lot of trouble.  (Not an I guess or think.  A buddy found a bunch on ebay)
 
Then, one in good shape will be anywhere from $700-$1,000.  You need to acquire one that is new enough that the programing software will run on modern Windows unless you have a way-back machine or are a computer systems engineer who know how to 'fake it' with a legacy OS.  Then, you have to know how to program it once you actually get the software going.
 
I wouldn't tell anyone that they are not capable of accomplishing any of this... but unless you are a tech savvy person with time and resources on your hands, it can be time consuming and frustrating to start with.  Given that many new users struggle with using tones and getting repeater access configured, I don't normally point people in this direction.

I've used a variety of setups, probably the most effective ever was a Motorola Spectra 9000 A9 and a 1/4 wave mounted antenna. That was a long time ago. 

In my area, everyone seems to want to look like they "overland" but never even leave the pavement. I have even noticed the CB radio crowd mount two antennas, one on each side of their lifted Jeep or truck, but not even have a radio connected, as it looks cool. I show up with my old Blazer and a Phantom Antennex antenna, and they wonder if I even have any radio gear installed (helps with some of the hiking trail parking lot thieves too). 
Advertising cool gear in your rig may look cool, but does it work....some times yes, and sometimes no. I am amazed at Midlands marketing though, they are filling a niche for sure. But for those that know what I use, I'm just the "Motorolian Empire Warlord"....another person's words. (That does sound cool, I must admit). 
Whatever you use, make sure it works well, and is installed well (grounded, adequate power, less bends in low loss coax, good antenna), and you will be far ahead of many that just buy off of websites and plug things in. 
 

I saw a post on FB about the release of the antennae. I think they are good looking pieces, as long as they work well. I had commented on said post, and a local know-it-all who probably got his license 3 weeks ago and discovered what radio was 4 weeks ago.... proceeded to tell me off as if I was wrong and didn't know anything. 
That's fine, I deleted my comment, so he's talking to his self. I don't argue with idiots on FB.
The summary is I felt the product was nice, but Midland is good at marketing. You'll buy a $259 antenna because they tell you it's good. If you need a rugged antenna for Jeepin', that's cool I get it, I hope it works good for you. I know the going gets rough out there, but my only point was that in all my years of experience, a 1/4 wave has outworked everything in the long run. That doesn't mean I'm telling anyone they have to use it, just that tried and true is just that. 
I have worked in radio and telecom for 30+ years, I know what I know. I don't push that on anyone, but I have helped many people with radio issues and I don't do it to be heard, only to help. When I first got a GMRS license nearly 30 years ago, we had to find a commercial radio to recrystal if we wanted to use GMRS. Now there is some great product out there, and I do like the Midland stuff too. 

I saw a post on FB about the release of the antennae. I think they are good looking pieces, as long as they work well. I had commented on said post, and a local know-it-all who probably got his license 3 weeks ago and discovered what radio was 4 weeks ago.... proceeded to tell me off as if I was wrong and didn't know anything. 
That's fine, I deleted my comment, so he's talking to his self. I don't argue with idiots on FB.
The summary is I felt the product was nice, but Midland is good at marketing. You'll buy a $259 antenna because they tell you it's good. If you need a rugged antenna for Jeepin', that's cool I get it, I hope it works good for you. I know the going gets rough out there, but my only point was that in all my years of experience, a 1/4 wave has outworked everything in the long run. That doesn't mean I'm telling anyone they have to use it, just that tried and true is just that. 
I have worked in radio and telecom for 30+ years, I know what I know. I don't push that on anyone, but I have helped many people with radio issues and I don't do it to be heard, only to help. When I first got a GMRS license nearly 30 years ago, we had to find a commercial radio to recrystal if we wanted to use GMRS. Now there is some great product out there, and I do like the Midland stuff too.