gortex2

If using long chunks of feedline they should be held in place with hoisting grips. That hold the cable to the mast or tower.
https://www.talleycom.com/product/ACYHG-PL-12

Personally I'd focus on feedline and antenna. I dont trust dbi numbers as they are normally no where near what they list. But then again this is normal in many areas.Those that talk about 200 miles on a hand held are talking to repeaters 5000' in the air or full of doggy do. In another thread I talked about my RT97 that I installed in my motorohome. I used a FG4500 antenna on my ladder at about 12' in the air. I had 10' of LMR400 down to the repeater. From Charlotte Motor Speedway Turn 4 camping I could get about a mile south and maybe 1 1/2 north of the track to my hand helds in a vehicle. My JK Midland 15 watt radio with 1/4 wave on fender mount could go about 2 miles south but could get almost 3 miles north. Looking at the terrain in that area you would see why. UHF is line of site as you know. More power at the antenna the better, but its also a balance. Your HT needs to get back there. People think a 25 watt repeater will make there hand helds talk 20 miles and they may hear but that doesn't mean they can get back to the repeater. In the LMR world we will balance the repeater. If a customer only has 4 watt UHF radios in a warehouse we will lower the repeater power to 5 or 6 watts.  

Some people don't agree with how repeaters should be used. I actually don't really care for these linked repeaters that give a lot of traffic from 2 people 8 miles apart in Indianapolis. For some reason I have to listen to that in the Chicago area. I might be compelled to put a louder one over top of it if I were independently wealthy... 
There are only 8 repeater channels and they fill in metro areas.

In my 40 years in the commercial LMR world I've never installed an antenna with a loop below it. Not really sure why folks think its needed. None of mine at home or at any of my tower sites have a loop. Most have a drip loop near the bulding enterence but many have proper antenna line feedthrus to eliminate water ingress at the location. 

No coordination. 

What is the leangth of the LMR400 you used ? Shorter the cable the better it will work. If you copuld mount the repeater just inside the shop 10' below the antenna I would think you would have much better results. Remember its still 3db of loss per 100' so even 50' of cable you will loose some power to the antenna. At 50' of cable you only getting about 4 watts to the antenna. 

This Motorola mic is a little over 30 years old and still in new like condition and I can still use it on my HT1000, MT2000/MTS2000, and my XTS series radios.  It has had a lot of use over the years.

Since, I don't have a need or can I use a radio on 700/800 MHz, and I am not a HAM dude and never will be, and I don't intend to use MURS for anything, I don't think I would ever have a need for a multi-band APX radio.  I thought about getting a single band APX radio for UHF just so I can learn about that series a little more but, I just haven't done that yet, maybe on a rainy day when I am bored and want to spend some money for the hell of it.
Since, I've had my GMRS license(s) since the early 90s, I guess I am one of those GMRS old dogs and UHF suits me fine.

Oops, I guess this is a Base Station antenna. I would look into a Laird FG4605 5 dB Omni antenna. No trimming required. If you use quality LMR400 cable and connectors, not that KMR400 crap from Amazon, and keep it around 30 something feet, you'll probably will see low 1 points on the VSWRs, if you only want to do it once and have it last for a long time.

I have bought new Motorola radios and accessories for several decades. I still have those radios and accessories, except for the batteries and the molded earpieces for my earwire kits, that are well over 30 years old and still in good working condition. My latest radios and the associated accessories are the XTL and XTS series. I haven't dived into the APX series yet and the main reason for not diving into the APX portables has to do with the APX series portable accessories are not compatible with my JEDI and Astro Digital Series radios. I am heavily invested in the JEDI and Astro Digital Series audio accessories which are compatible with each other. Also, I do have an investment in both my VISAR and Astro Saber series accessories unfortunately, they are not compatible with anything.
I'm not sure if I will go the APX portable series route in the future. I maybe consider the APX mobiles since, I am somewhat there now with the later XTL 2500 and 5000 version mobiles.
Since, I have 9 XTL and 1 MCS2000 series mobiles and at least 35 various Motorola model portables, I just don't have a need at the moment to jump into the APX series. And that doesn't include some Midland and one other brand stuff.
 

The physical math for this stuff isn't as hard as you might think.
Calculating ERP the 'easy' way.
First thing is to convert your RF power in watts to dBm.  Lots of phone apps that will do that for you.
Then you subtract the cable loss in dB from the dBm number from the above conversion.
Then ADD the antenna gain in dB to that number. 
Take the resulting number and convert it back to watts from dBm.
That's all there is to it. 
 
Now there is a second part to it if you are so inclined to do it. 
Mind you this is a comparison number and not a 'true' ERP number. 
But for every doubling in antenna height, you 'gain' an additional 6dB.
Now of course, cable losses increase with this, but it's pretty much a standard calculation used by RF engineer types.  So that can be applied too if you are trying to figure out how much better having an antenna further up than you already have it.
 

Or if your really bored or really want a proper ground system read this...
https://www.blm.gov/sites/blm.gov/files/Lands_ROW_Motorola_R56_2005_manual.pdf
 
 

Welcome, Leo. Nice review.  I suspect you’ll find that you seldom use it as a base station and instead just use your handheld radios to talk through it to other radios. That’s an ideal use for a personal repeater.  Let us know which location you decide on and how it works.
And feel free to disregard wrxp381’s negative comments. Most of us do.
 

While I prefer Motorola repeaters the Kenwood TKR850 is a solid 2RU repeater. It can run of a 12V battery if needed as the main source is 12V. If I was lookiing I'd go for a MTR 2000/3000 myself. They are a solid 100% continuous duty repeaters but folks complain becasue of software. 

While I don't know that I fully agree, I think the bigger issue is people with unmonitored repeaters.  Guys will put up a repeater as a right of passage in both communities.  They get a couple radios and lash them together with some sort of repeater controller and a duplexer and hang an antenna on their house.  Then they find out about linking and add a node controller.  At some point they find a decent location for it and pop the antenna up a 100 feet or so and then forget about it.  They don't monitor it, or bother with it at all.  Or they start linking it to every other repeater they can find will allow it. 
This can be good or bad.  A group of linked repeaters just becomes a larger community.  And therefore gives access to more people overall. This can be a good thing.  The repeater community, if they behave and use proper etiquette on the repeater system, all goes good.  But with the added community, you add folks that can destroy that community.  And your odds of finding that person or persons increase with every repeater you add to the group.  Then if you don't monitor the traffic on the repeater you are allowing it to go south.  
Just my personal opinion.
 

Radios such as professional series Motorola and Kenwood are programmed only by proprietary software would meet your requirement. These radios do not have any FPP capabilities.

Or if your really bored or really want a proper ground system read this...
https://www.blm.gov/sites/blm.gov/files/Lands_ROW_Motorola_R56_2005_manual.pdf
 
 

Or if your really bored or really want a proper ground system read this...
https://www.blm.gov/sites/blm.gov/files/Lands_ROW_Motorola_R56_2005_manual.pdf
 
 

Or if your really bored or really want a proper ground system read this...
https://www.blm.gov/sites/blm.gov/files/Lands_ROW_Motorola_R56_2005_manual.pdf
 
 

Just remember who these manufacturers are marketing to. There's a huge market for people who just want to buy a radio and use it out of the box with as little drama as possible. There's a much smaller market that wants to buy a radio and immediately connect it to their favorite software and change everything. The money is in the huge market.

It looks like in the manufacturer's efforts to maintain compliance with the FCC and channel number consistency with other GMRS and FRS radios, the firmware is looking at only the channel numbers when you press the PTT, and doesn't care about what the frequencies are. From a firmware simplicity standpoint, it's probably easier for them to just lock out those seven channels instead of programming the firmware to look for specific frequencies, bandwidth and power levels.

So if that's the case then anyone with any FCC license should get free use of GMRS ? And to be honest the HAM fee is about 20 years too late. 
 

I have been a ham for a long time.  But I have also been a commercial radio tech for half that time.  While I have run into a number of hams that seemed to have some level of superiority complex, he seems to have the same complex that is anti-ham. 
We have butted heads a couple of times on here (yes, he is a member) because he didn't care for my detailed answer on a topic or something to that effect.  
I don't bother with his videos.  But after doing commercial radio for 15 years, if I can't figure out GMRS radio, I need to find a different job. 

After reading several of his post I’ve come to the conclusion he’s just a special type of individual. If get my drift.

I wouldn't overlook the Midland GXT67 Pro for a GMRS Handheld Portable radio. It would be a better quality radio, than any CCR. Just so you know, it's a simple radio with very few features but definitely will get the job done better in performance.
And, you can ask the GMRS queen.