jec6613

That's super common actually. Motorola repeaters are just a pair of their mobile radio boards in the same chassis, same for Yaesu being a pair of mobile boards, Wouxun's dedicated repeater, and so on. It saves a ton on development and manufacturing costs. The real enemy is heat, as you've noted. What dedicated repeaters do differently is cool the boards better - larger heatsinks, ducted fans, and forced ventilation are common in a front to back 2U 2-post chassis normally used for repeaters, while the mobile radio usually must passively sink the heat, or, at best, has a low noise 40mm fan. A 2U chassis can easily vent over 2kW of heat if designed properly (just look at servers), a couple of hundred watts for radios and control boards is basically nothing a single 60mm fan can't handle. At least, once you stop caring about the audible noise of the cooling system! If I were building a repeater on the cheap, personally I'd pick up something like this and take my tin snips to the interior: https://www.newegg.com/black-athena-power-rm-2u200h/p/N82E16811192310 It comes with two 12V fans, plenty of room for the power supply and the RX unit, in a couple of hours it could easily turn two independent mobile radios into a repeater. I'd probably throw in a temperature sensor and fan failure alarm too for my own peace of mind.

According to the spec sheet, it'll probably heat up slightly more. The Maxon draws as much power to output 40W as the Wouxun draws to output 50W, since the Maxon seems to primarily be a VHF radio. Without getting a real repeater, the best one can hope for is to either: (1) reduce power output, (2) increase cooling, or (3) reduce usage.

Getting an antenna on the roof, 10 miles with 5 watts is quite reasonable even with the dinky little ones that come with Midland's "Micromobile". Actually, in a pinch, throwing one of those on the lid of your gas grill does pretty good as well - just getting it outside of the home will help a lot. As a rule of thumb, in GMRS in most situations, the extra height of getting it to the top of the roof will help range more than a lower-down higher performing antenna. However, topography around you will impact that more than anything - for instance, anything bolted on to the backside of my home does as well as something on the roof because of my local topography - I can reach about 1 mile in one direction, and 50+ in the other so long as I have at least 10 watts. Honestly, so long as you're within about 30-ish degrees of vertical, not worth it to bend the antenna. Anything under 3dbi gain is going to be effectively an omnidirectional antenna anyway, and you're close enough to vertically polarized that you can talk to all of the other vertically polarized GMRS users no problem. At most normal antenna sizes, the polarization will matter about as much as pure antenna gain. Whatever you do, ground it correctly and get a good lightning arrestor - I use TMS personally. Lightning strikes are no joke! IMHO: If you have a gable, I'd run it discretely along or behind the facia board, and just drop an NMO mount into the center of the vent (maybe after making a flat area with a hammer) at the top of the roof, at about the same distance from the end as it is wide, seal it thoroughly to the roof, and then slather the connector with dielectric grease and put one of the little 2.1 db gain antennas. I wouldn't even bother with a Laird Phantom, Midland Ghost, or similar, they're really great on vehicles, but on a structure, they don't perform much if any better than the 1/4 wave verticals that everybody gives you for basically free. If I didn't have a gable, then I'd punch it down through the barrier into the attic, then seal it all up afterwards.

To clarify, if you're assisting in a disaster but don't meet the requirements of immediate threat to life/property, you can't legally transmit in GMRS either. And nobody ever answered my question of if they're certified or not...

So, since this is the GMRS forums, which one of these are part 95 compliant? Because, sometimes, it's not academic if they are or aren't.

This is really simple ... if I can hear 10 dBm into the noise, what does an extra 35dbm of noise get me? I might be able to filter down to 1-2 dBm into the noise, but 45 dBm is just completely pointless. Sensitivity is almost never the problem, selectivity is - the ability to reject nearby signals and filter them out. As for which MOTOTRBO set, I didn't ask too much about it, it was the ones the local constabulary are issued. Also, I have to question... why are you posting about using all of these radios which are illegal in GMRS, on a GMRS forum?

Usually my bar is to transmit next to it while it's listening to a very weak signal and watch what happens. Trying a few different bands, as well.

You'll have access to the back catalog then. Every other issue or so there's an equipment review, and they're remarkable how comparable they are over 50+ years with consistent measurements.

Speak for yourself, but there are published schematics, alignment, and tune-up, and all you have to do is ask Wouxun for them. Baofeng, TYT, Anytone, etc are all different companies, of course. And honestly, 35 dbm sensitivity doesn't matter one bit to me, their selectivity is the same, and I'm rarely in a quiet enough environment for the sensitivity to matter. This may shock you some, but I have a Wouxun DMR handset that outperforms the Hyteras and is roughly on par with the Motorolas getting in and out of TRBO repeaters, as well as simplex. Of course, on the other hand, I've also seen Wouxuns that are only a hair better than a Baofeng at twice the price. CCRs are a, "Buyer beware," jungle ... some gems in with the pile of manure. But for me, that's not a problem to quickly sort them out. This wasn't a comment about their quality of equipment, merely the quality of them as a supplier. They have a pretty low tolerance for dealing with a bad supplier.

You do know that QST does this, right? And while it may be for the amateur community, many of the CCR stuff uses the same design with different programming for multiple uses.

Like specifically that I can take it places that I can't take a part 90 programmed on the same frequencies. And remember: the KG-805 series is a LMR part 90 circuit board, and I've never had it desense. A bit of spurious emissions, but well within tolerances (and within Motorola's specs for their own products).

As I said before, I don't know the contract, and I don't know who was the asshole in this exchange. It could be Wouxun was entirely above board and their retailer caused the problem, which isn't uncommon in business at all, and wouxun.us just threw up that message as a bit of a poison pill - again, no idea. Since HRO sells them though, I don't think they can be that bad. And I figure that that at worse I'll get better support from this than I will with a 10+ year old Kenwood or Motorola from eBay ... not least of which because my credit card will refund it.

Well, looks like it's live: https://www.buytwowayradios.com/blog/2020/10/introducing-the-wouxun-kg-805f-license-free-frs-radio.html Yikes... at $80, I'd pick up DeWalt or Motorola. The big antenna version can't be that much better, it's still a basic duck limited to max of 0 dbi.

Yeah, but that's vendor side issues. They were on the hook for warranty issues and not getting the support from Wouxun that they wanted. I'm not privy to the contract, so can't speak to the details, but clearly they wanted to stick it to them. Cricket seems to be going all-in with them to make sort of like them their own private house brand - Wouxun generally makes products to spec for companies buying them, and their radios are built like LEGO kits ... I think they make a grand total of three distinct models, with hundreds of variations. And, to be fair, Powerwerx did this as well, and it's worked out well for them.

$80 for fully programmable GMRS handheld with 100+ channels available, removable antenna, and 5W output, that uses modern computers and accessories so that I can get them new. Realistically, they hit out of their price range ... not so sure about the FRS versions they're coming out with, but I expect they'll be on par with the Motorolas at least. The Wouxun are Superhetereodyne, and a decent one at that, while the Baofeng are SDR's - they're very different animals, and Wouxun performs much better. They're not a Kenwood, Yaesu, or an Icom, let alone a Motorola, but they give Alinco a run for their money.