gortex2

All my vehicles have various APX mobiles as I am in public safety also. For strictly GMRS I also run the MXT115 in my fathers car and on my golf cart. I do run an XTL5000 at home, but also have a CDM1250 next to it that sits on my repeater channel. The CDM and 1225 are ideal GMRS radios.

Welcome to GMRS world. The tower stuff is a challenge and can be a handshake deal to a lease with a million dollar insurance policy. All depends on how hard you look. One thing I have noticed since I moved to the south is the amount of buildings with an old tower out back with no antenna or a damaged antenna on them. Alot of old car repair places, tractor supply and manufacturing buildings have them. Back home we found a warehouse that had multiple antennas on the roof. I was able to manage an agreement with the owner to use the UHF antenna for GMRS in trade for cleaning up the radio room and helping with some small projects. It worked well until he sold the building. The biggest issue with any tower owner is going to be access. The other thing many look for is done right work. Not saying it needs to be a $10,000 repeater but don't show up with 2 baofengs in a tupperware container. When doing the install use common sense and do what you can to make it correct. Proper cable, connectors, grounding is all key to a good working unit and a good looking unit. Another location I had one I was responsible for my own power. $35.00 a month i could do split between some buddies. I wouldn't even try to talk to American Tower or an of the big tower folks unless you have a few grand a month to burn a hole. Look for those like above.

So here is my take on this as this has come up in the past. I run my repeaters with the travel tone and other tones. If a user wants a specific tone in the past and wanted to donate to the "repeater" fund I gave them another tone. More of the community tone aspect. Rarely did anyone ask or pay but I suggested when possible. My entire reasoning is the power bill. It was $35.00 a month and I had to pay it. I didn't care who used what but if i could recoup a little of that money to help offset the cost I tried. I went round and round with a ham club in the past about a similar item. They basically wanted to be in the shelter on the tower and not help out with anything yet they charged all there members dues yearly.... By no means did we kick anyone off or block users for not helping. I think anyone with that mentality should not own a repeater. As others have said in the past a repeater on a good tower can be very costly for the party that owns it.

The biggest change was 24 channels used a channel number only, if you want an alias then it was 20 channels.

As you quoted a rule "wireline". My understanding is that is TELCO line to a transmit site. I know many GMRS systems that use Microwave on a voted system.

DB404 is my go to antenna for repeaters in the UHF band. If I can squeeze out a few more dollars its the DB408. I have some that are over 25 years old and still going strong. They seem to hold up well with snow, ice and rain of CNY. I plan to order 2 DB408 for my new tower in VA as soon as i get the base set.

Was a member of REACT for many years in CNY until they basically ceased to exist. Late on we started to play with GMRS but our area was so large and no one wanted to commit. Sad to see the group fall apart. They were well respected unlike the ham clubs of the time. I know there are still some teams thru-out the US that also still use GMRS. Cool to see some old history like that.

The L Bracket works well and in our county when we were on lowband installed hundreds on chiefs vehicles. They worked ok but in CNY Winters required a new NMO mount jut about every year. I found the enclosed mount from Larsen did perform better in this environment. Again it puts the antenna not in the best location but we couldn't convince a volunteer chief to drill a hole in his $50K truck. I actually use the flat stainless bracket on my wifes JK for her VHF antenna. Serves the purpose but if i could find a way to mount a 1/4 wave on a jeep thats what it would be. Her UHF and 800 are all pepper shakers inside the rear window on a plate with 3 NMO mounts.

So in my 30 years in public safety radio I have seen varied responses on all of this. Normally the higher the frequency the better a magnetic mount will perform. Normally this is because in UHF and 800 you are talking to a repeater or system, whereas VHF or Lowband is normally simplex or a base station. I have had very good results on mag mounts in the UHF and 800 bands, but all tests have been on trunking systems or good repeaters. In the Search and Rescue business 99% of our traffic is VHF simplex. We have some locations we know if they have a magnetic mount forget it. I have done tests at those locations with new mag mount antenna next to the base of a NMO and the NMO will talk out and hear when the mag mount does neither. In addition we have some pretty remote areas we operate in and even the NMO mount can have some effect on the efficiency of the antenna. I found the better antenna NMO mount is the Larsen enclosed mount vs the standard Motorola. I now install these in all my SAR installs for the VHF radio. UHF I stick with the standard Motorola NMO but the UHF radio is on a P25 trunking system. YMMV....

look at the power directly from the transmitter with duplexer removed and a 50 ohm load. There is a chance the PA is shutting down for some reason.

Thanks guys thats a great topic. At the old shop i worked at we did a similar training day for our sales folks with the same setup. They didn't understand why it took us an entire day to run hard line vs 9913. After seeing the differences in cables they also understood why the cost was so much different.

Interesting wall mounting... guess if yo use the fiberglass you dont have to worry about ground loops The one on the tower looks like mine ! We had some pretty stiff winds over the summer and it appears the tower guy didn't crank down the top braket enough. In the spring they do tower inspections so going to have him re-align it then. Mine if only a DB404 or Id send him up now. Sadly I have seen antennas sit like that for years and still work fine, yet minue would topple to the ground the day i need it.

Depending on the type of the duplexer it should work fine on 462.625 with no issues. I tune my "mobile duplexers" to the middle (650) and have all three frequencies in my GR1225 in my Motor home. That way when i get someplace I can change if there is interference on the channel.

I had some in storage. I can't get there until the weekend but will try to dig one out.

I know this topic comes up every couple of months. I have a group of friends who are radio guys. In the past we used MURs, then GMRS, and even some public safety stuff. Most of them are hams also but not all. Solution. Get a UHF Land Mobile frequency and do what we want on it. Yes coordination can be a pain, but most of the frequency coordinators can give you a good idea of frequency use in your area. I think all in all we spent around $500 but they got a license, do DMR and used the same repeater site they had for the GMRS stuff. Bonus was as guys want ot come online they no longer have to get a GMRS license. I know this isn't the goal here, but if your set on a DMR radio go this way. We still use multiple GMRS repeaters.

When i was in area in the spring at the NASCAR races I heard chatter on a few GMRS channels. For the October race only had my HT so didn't hear much. I have a .650 repeater in my Motor home when i am on track in Spring.

I would caution the use of LMR400 on the antenna cable. Lots of issues for folks with the foil covered braid.

Your address shows watervliet ny so I would start with the 2 local MSS Pittsfield and Wells. I believe both get over $75.00 an hour. Your not talking a cheap project as was stated above. Just a single repeater (depending on what you have) install could cost well over $1000. If you need equipment keep adding. Shops are in the business of making money as they should....

A bad antenna and coax can cause headaches for GMRS (or UHF in general). I have multiple repeater at tower sites that have great coverage but are installed properly with 1/2" or 7/8" heliax and a real base station antenna. I have removed one of them for a temp repeater in the past doing similar to what you are doing. Never have i gotten decent coverage. LMR400 as others said is not the best for this. I have found 1/2" andrews superflex has been good for a temp setup. I run it on a 25' mast with a DB404 antenna and get decent coverage.

So it really depends on the location and the subscribers being used. I actually have a low power GR1225 GMRS repeater in my motorhome. I hit the antenna at 5 watts. Being this is run on batteries for days while on the road I can't draw alot of power. When I use this system i am only using 4 watt portables, so if i can't talk in there is no reason to have the repeater transmitting 25 watts. Back when i worked at a MSS this was one of the ways we would balance radio systems in factories and buildings also. You could reuse the frequencies in an area as alot of times the channel would not make it outside of the building. Every repeater should be balanced. I tried to explain this to a local ham club who is a "i need 100 watts out" when all they have is HT's ......

UHF Motorola Maxtrac 16 Pin radios are all over now. The PA wasn't the worst of the bunch and the last 2 I picked up were under $50 each. Being GMRS is wide band and most folks can't use these for much else they make great GMRS repeaters. I have 4 set up in different area's and while none are used alot they all function and are easy to setup and build. MY last unit cost jsut under $300 for 2 MAXTRACS, a mobile duplexer and a power supply.

The ICOM F4TR was a LTR trunking radio from ICOM. Ironically I sold all of mine programmed on GMRS also to people. The cable is like $10 and you should be able to locate the software pretty easy although it is in DOS and will not run on most new computers. I programmed the buttons pretty simple on the ones i sold (scan, talk around and power level)

Are you looking ot change the website or the forums ? I think there is a real need for the website to be able to be updated with inaccurate info (old repeater sites). As for the forum I think its good. I'll be honest I come here for GMRS only. I go to RR for ham or commercial stuff. Keeping somewhat on a single topis is good and think there is good balance here.

Its a really slick mast kit. Sometime we only use a few poles and other times use all of them. For a fast deployment with not all the poles we don't even run guy ropes out and it works fine. We have a small VHF dipole antenna that is pretty light so it rarely moves the mast.

For hard line some radio shops will sell scrap (under 50') for a reasonable price. I have picked up 35-40' chunks for under $50.00. The smaller the shop the more likely they are to sell it.