gortex2

I guess it really depends on the area. Most of the areas I work in the RACES/ARES groups get limited funds from the county. Instead of using it to get good equipment they prefer cheap with quantity. When the hardline connector cost more than the antenna on the end of the 1 5/8" hardline you should question your goal. JMHO. 

I just had this conversation with a EOC director about the amount of CCR junk in boxes. He stated thats what the ham guys wanted. The county spent alot of money on hardline and installs for the ham club to order and request a $60 antenna on the top of the tower. Its sad that hams are that cheap and they wonder why more and more they are shoved out of any large incident. Sorry your CCR isn't going to work better than my APX8000 in an emergency....

I just had this conversation with a EOC director about the amount of CCR junk in boxes. He stated thats what the ham guys wanted. The county spent alot of money on hardline and installs for the ham club to order and request a $60 antenna on the top of the tower. Its sad that hams are that cheap and they wonder why more and more they are shoved out of any large incident. Sorry your CCR isn't going to work better than my APX8000 in an emergency....

Price is a signal to the marketplace which indicates opportunity for those who are best able to meet the demand.  If you're a consumer, you always have the choice to walk away from an over-priced product. If you claim that you "NEED" this product - then why did you not purchase more of it while the supply was available at a price that you could afford? After all, that's what the Warehouse did - and that's why they actually have a supply. If you wish to punish those with foresight to purchase products in advance of need - then you deserve to end up in a country full of empty shelves.
If you don't like the price, don't buy it. That's what sensible people do. People in a panic will always pay $50 for a snow shovel that they could have bought for $10 the week before the storm hit. Then they'll try to blame someone else for their lack of planning.
 

Over pricing is a politically correct way of stating price gouging. While demand and supply are factors in setting prices for merchandise inflating the selling price on items in stock by significant amounts due to availability fits into the realm of price gouging better than over pricing such as adding a premium to the established purchase prices.

In my humble neophyte opinion there's no reason to install / run a repeater unless;
(a) It is self serving
or
(b) You are generous benevolent soul that want's to see others enjoy the medium at your expense

I'm baffled by the amount of folks who think they want to re-write the rules and channels to benefit them. Until a few years ago we had 8 repeater splits and thats it. For folks above line A they lost 2 off the bat. If your talking simplex use a channel not in a repeater. Its simple. 

Add in the Motorola M1225 and P1225 radios for dual Part 95/Part 90 certification. They're out of production for almost 20 years now, but I've still got a few hundred M1225's running in daily commercial service. I wouldn't call them rugged, but they've certainly been reliable.
 

No reason for Midland to lower the price when they are selling all they can make.  Many people remember the Midland name from CB's and scanners from the 70's and 80's and have no knowledge of better Japanese brands and fewer still can sort between the wheat and chaff of equipment made elsewhere in Asia. 

What Jeep do you have ? On my JK I run the rugged ridge mount on the front left cowl. On my JT I used the Mopar Pillar light mount.
 

Does no one read any of the rules ? Those frequencies are only allowed in a portable radio and not mobile. Why would midland add them as receive only ? It would jsut confuse 99% of the market. Why would you think they are "censoring" the radio ? they are following the rules.
 
Love them or hate them Midland has a huge market in GMRS. They sell an out of the box simple devise. I would bet 95% of the Midland users never uses repeaters and if the do use one repeater. The issue is more licensing in my opinion. over 3/4 of the Jeep guys I talked to at the last Jeep Jamboree had no license but had the Midland radio (Many 275). While its required many people just buy what they perceive as needed. Midland will continue to sell GMRS radios. While many don't like them they are ideal for simple GMRS users. 
 

Says someone with 20W MURS radio. :rolleyes (x33)

Specs for stability and spectral purity are the same between Part 90 and 95(e), so quite a lot of people are using Part 90 equipment. However, from a legal standpoint, they are not legit for GMRS. You would be a better neighbor with good Part 90 radios vs some crappy CCR certified for 95(e).

No. Just leave the cable. 

You're also going to need FAA clearance being that tall. I'd recommend getting a consultant like Steel in the Air to do a feasibility study. They can give you a realistic idea of what the market is in your general area, what the going price is for cellular, and they can also tell you about any local towers that might be your market competition for leases. If it's all owned by American Tower or Crown Castle, you've probably got some room to maneuver and get under their pricing.
There's an aspect of "if you build it, they will come" - but most people building new towers have one or two carriers in their pocket, meaning they're guaranteed some income right from the start and they won't go broke if they don't load the tower to full capacity within a year or two.
Most of the cellular carriers aren't interested in huge coverage areas any more. 4G and 5G start to drop their data speeds once you get more than a few miles out. I'd be surprised if they're interested in going any higher up than 150 -200 ft.
Not sure what the zoning is like in your area, but I'd want to have a conversation with whoever is in charge and take their temperature before you commit to anything. I've seen zoning stuff add years to a build timeline. Especially if you need to get lawyers involved. 40 years ago, it wasn't too hard to put up a tower where you wanted it. Now, it's hard enough to put up a tall tower at all, let alone put it where you actually want/need it.
Good luck with it.

Great report, full of factual information based on actual observations confirming your research. This spring/summer consider putting the two batteries in parallel for added capacity even if the LiFe one has to be removed before winter to prevent freezing.

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

It's worth repeating.
If you're running a compact "flat pack" duplexer - and you're pumping out over 20 watts, there's a real good chance that your system's measured desense is 1.5 to 2 dB.  Seems like a small amount, right?  However, if you can improve your receiver performance by 3dB -you have effectively doubled the area of coverage that your portables can talk back in from.
One of my first Ah-Ha! moments in 2-way radio was when an old timer took me out to a tower site where a customer on the repeater system was complaining about poor coverage with their hand-held portables. When we got on site, he spent a bunch of time setting up his test equipment and taking measurements. He already knew what he was going to do, but he took the time to educate me. He showed me the performance of the system as it was and showed me the measured desense. He let me listen in to "weak" portables that were operating on the edge of the system.
The customer had been sold a brand new high power 100 watt "high performance" repeater, but was running it all through an existing flat pack 6 cavity notch duplexer. They spent their money on more POWER, not on the duplexer - they already had one of those.  Long story short, after showing me the system performance as it was - he turned the power down to 10 watts. Suddenly, the units "on the edge" were coming in much more clearly, and users that had not been able to get in at all were now using the system, but still were scratchy.  He then added a tuned bandpass cavity between the duplexer and the repeater's receiver, and WOW, now they ALL sounded good. Then he went back and showed me what zero desense looked like. Couldn't even see a difference in the noise floor when the transmitter was keyed up locally. Now the repeater had good ears - an ability to listen that matched it's ability to talk out. Balance.

Most common issue with repeaters is too much power and desense. In the LMR world we installed alot of 15-20 watt repeaters that covered alot of the county. LOS is king. If your entire fleet is 3-4 watt portables there is absolutely no reason to install a 50 watt repeater. We spent lots of time balancing the systems we installed to be close to the subscriber. It eliminates false expectations and user interactions. A decent antenna will make all the difference. Sorry but an Ed Fong and a DB404 is night and day. a DB404 with a RT97 on a good site with proper RF line would be a great combination. 

Most common issue with repeaters is too much power and desense. In the LMR world we installed alot of 15-20 watt repeaters that covered alot of the county. LOS is king. If your entire fleet is 3-4 watt portables there is absolutely no reason to install a 50 watt repeater. We spent lots of time balancing the systems we installed to be close to the subscriber. It eliminates false expectations and user interactions. A decent antenna will make all the difference. Sorry but an Ed Fong and a DB404 is night and day. a DB404 with a RT97 on a good site with proper RF line would be a great combination. 

Yes, it is bad.  You'll probably create massive desense in the receiver, and do nothing to create robust repeater coverage. 
Want to improve repeater coverage? Improve receiver performance. 9 times out of 10, that's where the system is lacking. 
Horsepower makes all the headlines, but there's more to the story when it comes to real world performance.

Sometime in a previous life my employer was contracted to do specialzed maintenance at cell locations.  One service call for no signal from the equipment invovled in our contract turned out to be the fact that the cell tower primary owner forgot to pay the electric bill and the meter had been pulled. The tower stayed on line an additional 30 hours then the generator fuel tank went dry. 
All cell towers are subject to random mistakes as such. 

In an emergency don't count on any repeaters to be functioning. Some may have provisions for emergency power, many don't. The ones that do will likely be reserved for emergency traffic only, not open for general communications. For the later you'll need to rely on simplex or put up you own repeater and then insure it has power to continue operation in a grid down situation.

For Part 90 gear I would recommend a good used MTR2000. They made high and low power and they are pretty solid. I also ran a Kenwood TKR850 for a bit which was solid for my limited use. 

Hmm... I order almost once a month from motorolasolutions.com, the site is not slow for me, but again, in computers it really depends... if you run the site with a Pentium III I am sure it will be a bit slower than if you run it with a Ryzen 9...
Absolutely solid advice here: Get a NOS, or a slightly used XPR 7550e. I have an entire fleet of those and I've never had a problem.
G.