jnr0104

I gave up on repeater book for GMRS, they are good with ham, but too many glitches on GMRS in my opinion.

Daniel, I see you are in Corpus, at present time only 1 repeater in the whole place, and it is not operational yet, out in Flour Bluff, when it is online, it May orMayNot coverwhere you live just looking at google maps. First of all, in Corpus there are probably Not going to be many gmrs repeaters up on commercial towers,,So ur HT, is not gonna do a very good job like one will do with amateur radio , with tall towers and 100 watt repeaters. most of the repeaters within 45 miles of you to are 10 watt(5-6watts after duplexer) Retevis RT97 repeaters, with antennas avg height of 30 ft on pushup poles( american tower company owns nearly all the big towers in the rural areas , and they dont want gmrs ot ham on their stuff( I know because I have one of them on my ranch).They still are goid repeaters, we are getting 15-25 mildes coverage with them( we are located in Refugio, Aransas, and San Patricio Counties, 6 repeaters scattered around up here.) So plan on getting a 40 -50 watt mobile radio, either for vehicle,with a midland 6db magnet mount antenna on the center of your roof, or if your lucky enough to live in a house with NO HOA gestapo,a 50 watt radio, a power supply, 50 or so ft of lmr400 coax, a 40 ft pushup pole , good to 30 ft without guying it if attached to eve of house, and a Good gmrs base antenna, i suggest a comet CA712EFC. Now for the bad news. With either of those setups, you may be able to get into the new flour bluff repeater, its antenna will be at 50 ft I believe, but it is one of the low power repeaters.And its owner id am a ateur radio guy brand new to GMRS, and he will have the same learning curve that the rest of us did getting things Just right to squeeze all the distance he can outta a low power system. That said, Chances are slim that you will be able to hit any of the other repeaters ( possibly Ingleside from certain areas of CC), But you still have simplex going for you. Over 110 folks in CC show to be licensed, all u gotta do is find some of em. If you come North of Portland you have much better chance of contacting some of our repeaters oreven catch some of the group on simplex (just about everyday 0500 to 0900 on the Bayside, or ingleside repeaters, and monitor ch19 simplex no tones, and ch 16 simplex no tones. We try to monitor bayside all day.Look up the repeaters in our area, on mygmrs hit the permission button, and you will get a response. If you are an amateur operator several of us monitor 146.500 simplex. We can answer questions you may have . Good luck! WQRJ814/ KF5WTB

So far anything made by B-tech. When new they are fine, but none I have had lasted very long without problems

Well, I have owned 13 Jeeps since 1976, and I am going to agree with Midland. That location givesa decent ground plane, especially if you have grounding strap on the hood to body. For what they were using the ghost for it would work just fine, for my uses I would have their taller 6 db antenna there.

In our area of texas 99.9% of people causing problems are construction crews, crain operating crews etc, we have found if we go over to the simplex channel they are illegally operating on and ask if their supervisor is availble, then explain the 2017 rule changes etc, they have moved off to an frs channel where they dont need a license , and we dont hear them on the repeaters anymore. So far all have been good folks

Good, that is a great idea , since we suggested ch19 for On Road travel!

Several of us in the Texas Coastal Bend region are using ch 19 with no tones. And I have heard a few conversations on ch 19 in the last month while on short trips. All seemed to be folks travelling together driving down the highway.. I do monitor ch 19 while around my base radio .

It doesn’t suck, I actually like it!

I have 2 of the RT 97s in service , for 5 watts they are pretty darn good! Hoping Midland goes at Least 25 watts out to the antenna! ??

$400.00 But You DO get an NMO magnet mount with an antenna that does a good job if you have a good ground plain, and if youwant a different antenna , unscrew the shorty and add a different NMO antenna to the mag mount. My MXT500 arrives this Friday , looking forward to trying it out in my Jeep. The image, was an answer in the questions on the Midland MXT500 page, looks like they are getting really serious on becoming the goto brand for GMRS!

This was the original question, so with this linking bundle on each of 2 of the rt97 repeaters, Will it link those repeaters to each other, OR just link each to the Mygmrs network? If it links individual repeaters to each other(not the network)Some friends andI with repeaters may be upgradingto the new retevis models and buying some bundles!

just my opinion of course, but I have found that most things that become New and Improved , kinda suck.

Bet they do Not have the ability to set up multi repeaters ( using the 8repeater pairs) naming each,and using different tones on them. If you travel to different areas with repeaters I would think the ability to have 50 or more repeaters stored in your radio would be handy. rather than the way the mxt400 is set up now.

Thats what I told him, I had never heard of that brand of radio so thought I would check

Someone asked me if I had ever heard of anyone using a Zastone D9000 with a small duplexer as a gmrs repeater, thought this may be a good place to find out.

Hope they add a fan on the500 and 575, my 400 get so hot you can barely touch it!

That paint job Really blended it into the tree! Interested to see how that holds up , Not sure how water tight they are.

Have 2 operating now, very impressed with coverage. Using Comet CA-712EFC antennas, short runs of lmr 400. These are listed on mygmrs.com, Ranch 650, and Copano Bay 675. The Ranch 650 runs off batteries and solar. located on a hill, antenna at 65 ft. Copano antenna only at 25 ft.