DONE

I typically use RADIO MOBILE (google it) for coverage mapping work. It has the ability to map both talk out and talk in from different subscriber configurations like mobile and portable with different power levels. Will pull down several different maps and create different maps depending on what you are asking it to do.

I 100% agree. Now, mind you I cheat. I have repeaters that are on both DMR-MARC and BrandMeister in my area. So I have multiple radios that are programmed for both systems. I have control of those radios via either tone remote (14 channel and one zone) MotoBridge, which has full zone/ channel control and TRBO-Vui / Radio Pro that also has full access to channel / zone programming. The TRBO-Vui is what I use with the Solo client on my phone to access those radios. Only have two currently configured for that. The VHF is all ham, the UHF is ham / commercial / GMRS. So that covers all the bases. The MotoBridge just switches zones, and has two radios for VHF and two for UHF, so I can get either system from either radio. I haven't seen or done anything with DMR Plus yet, But I do have an MTR3000 that I am currently running on 442.775 analog only. That repeater may get switched to DMR Plus if there is a reason to serve that system up locally. Most of what I do with it is monitor 3139 (Ohio TG) and the weather TG in Ohio. I don't see the programming being as much difficult as just plain tedious. But, I write code plugs for TRBO radios about twice a month at work for new installs, so I sort of have that down. I am looking at setting up my own RM server for TRBO since I have so many TRBO radios that I am managing for my own use. We have one at work, but I don't know how they would feel if I was sticking a bunch of my stuff on the company server.

OK in the ham realm here's who does what with digital. YEASU. Wires-X or Fusion which is C4FM, the same modulation scheme that is used in P25 but is not compatible with the commercial P25 offerings from any manufacture. ICOM. D-Star is their digital offering that is a fully ham system. The entire design of the system caters specifically to ham radio and has no commercial equivalent. This is a lined radio system that runs through various servers across the world. Call signs are registered and act as the radio ID. The system supports group and private calling (call sigh to call sign) across the entire system. The system is not band specific, meaning if an area has a full infrastructure roll out in place, users with VHF, UHF and 1.2Ghz radios call ALL talk to each other and anyone else on the system world wide. Kenwood has now adopted the D-Star technology as their digital offering for ham radio. Oddly, none of them are making a DMR radio that works with the MOTOTRBO DMR that is dominant in Amateur Radio currently. Those offerings are going to be commercial and the CCR's like BaoFeng, Anytone and Woxsun. Back to digital on ham and what's out there. I am gonna leave out discussion of hot spots. I know they are prevalent. I have one sitting here. But I personally don't consider talking 2 feet from my portable to my hot spot as real radio communications. So I will limit this to REAL (IMHO) radio systems with real infrastructure (repeaters with antenna's on towers). DMR is prevalent. Most hams know of this and many use it. Based on DMR repeaters, and a device called a C-Bridge there are two main systems. DMR-MARC and Brandmeister. These of course are both world wide systems using the Internet as a linking medium to connect the sites together. System is Talk Group based requiring not only the programming of a frequency and Color Code (similar to PL/DPL) in a Radio but a time slot and talk group ID as well to communicate. Bands supported are VHF, UHF and 900Mhz D-Star. Common in major metro area's. Build on all ICOM infrastructure. Specifically designed for ham radio from the ground up. Uses call signs as radio ID's to simplify management. System is also connected via the Internet. System is able to group and private call and has data transfer abilities. Bands supported are VHF, UHF and 1.2Ghz. P25. There is a lesser known P25 system that uses all Motorola infrastructure (Quantar repeaters) that is talk group based and Internet linked. This is the P25.link system. This system uses Cisco routers and software running on a Raspberry-Pi to link repeaters together across the internet. It uses reflectors similar to the MMDVM system (hot spots) for talk group support. This is a system requires more knowledge to connect to (must know Cisco router configuration and some level of Linux to load and configure the R-Pi. Has both internal Talk Groups that are PURE P25 and access to many MMDVM reflectors that allow for access for hot spots that can be configured for DMR, D-Star or any other digital mode supported by a hot spot.

Well, yes and no. And the FCC actually did the main one when issuing licenses in the PS band that had the emission designator for DMR. And that is significantly limiting ERP to pull the coverage footprint of the transmitted signal into a reasonable distance. Part of the problems that were created by DMR was the old school mentality of repeater systems for communications. That was put it as high as possible and run as much ERP as was legal. That mentality is why VHF low band is all but abandoned today. That stuff went up with 500 watt amplifiers to cover one county and it actually covered 8 or 10 counties. Then when the atmospheric conditions were favorable, you were talking to Arizona From Ohio and of course, the interference issue became a real problem. So, can you take a bunch of guys that have a CB radio mentality getting into GMRS that is further pushed forward by the guys that are already using the service where a 1.5 to 1 antenna match is TOO high, even though it's a .18dB signal loss and has ZERO effect on performance, to run a repeater with reduced power? And of course the answer is no. Because the rules say 50 watts, and by God, I can run 50 watts so I will run 50 watts. And I am not picking on the GMRS crowd here, this was an issue with professional radio techs doing it the way they always had done it, so there is zero reasonable expectation that hobbyist's are gonna do it the way it would need to be done. The FCC reacted to the issue on the public safety spectrum due to a glut of complaints they were getting from agencies and commercial radio shops fighting the interference that started as some agencies moved to DMR from analog. At one point they would not issue a license to any PS agency with an either a ERP or transmitter power level of 10 watts. I can't remember which it was, probably transmitter power level. For those that don't understand ERP (Effective Radiated Power) that is the realized effective signal level of a repeater SYSTEM including the feed line and antenna. So a system with a 50 watt transmitter, a 3dB loss in the cable and a 3dB gain antenna is 50 watts. But that same transmitter and line with a 6dB gain antenna would be an ERP of 100 watts due to the additional 3dB of antenna gain. GMRS and HAM radio doesn't have an ERP regulation, GMRS transmitter power is regulated at 50 watts and ham of course for most bands is 1500 watts. But a ham or GMRS operator can build any amount of gain into an antenna (as long as there is no additional active amplification) and have any ERP that system can produce. Ham's use this methodology to bounce signals off the moon and back to earth with large antenna arrays that produce ERP's in the ten's of thousands of watts.

This is only if we were to as ham operators shift our net to ham repeaters ( of course only those of us that have a ham license) that were AlStar linked. I guess I didn't specify that before. Lscott Pertaining to what you said regarding interference. I was specifically referring to the repeater pairs that were used multiple times in a similar geographic location. Obviously if two analog repeaters are close enough together they will interfere with each other. The issue really begins when the DMR modulation starts hitting analog signals on the same frequency and are close to capture in the receiver. DMR carries further than analog. I have tested this several times. These tests were against both wide and narrow band FM on VHF and UHF. With an analog receiver, the DMR signals were intelligible at the greatest distance, and the DMR radios would communicate a greater distance with all other factors (used the same repeater and antenna system) being equal. I have not tested the interference issues specifically. But We did have a DMR system in Fayette County Ohio and an analog narrow band FM system in Licking County Ohio. The FM system significantly interfered with the DMR system. The DMR system was built out to replace an FM wide band system in the same location in Fayette county. Both users had that same frequency for years and had never experienced issues with it prior to the conversion to DMR. At that point the DMR system had significant drop outs and the analog system was hearing the DMR digital transmissions in their receivers as the repeaters would drop (Licking county system was 6 site simulcast). I have never seen adjacent channel interference with DMR. Most likely since it's requirements for better frequency correctness than analog FM. (Can't remember the correct term here.) I have seen FM wide band radios off as much as 1200 Hz from center and work fine. DMR will exceed the acceptable BER long before the frequency drift gets that bad.

Lots to think on here. Selling spectrum as opposed to the continued increase of license holders and their money. I don't know what the agreements are for 'selling' spectrum. Is it a forever thing, as long as it's occupied or is it a lease with some fixed length of time? Reason I ask is this. GMRS and HAM are both a continuing revenue stream. This is from both new licenses and renewals of old licenses. If the sale of spectrum is done without a term then it's just done. Here's your money, and I can do as I please there as long as I want for no additional cost. Again, I don't know how that works. DMR on GMRS and interference. Would I like to see DMR made legal on GMRS. Yes, but I also realize, like others have and mentioned, the level of interference on the limited repeater spectrum could cause serious issues. I have seen the issues with DMR and analog trying to co-exist first hand on public safety frequencies and it didn't work. And the systems were several COUNTIES away from each other. There would be NO way that it could exist in the same county or city. Simply NOT possible. And they would interfere with each other,,, not just the interference from DMR to the analog, but the analog to the DMR as well. The interference from DMR is obvious, it puts noise on the air that the analog stuff would pick up. But the analog would cause increased BER on the DMR subscribers as well causing issues with pixelation of the audio and drop outs. How COULD it be addressed? Coordination would be a BIG part of it. Coupled with the DMR repeaters being limited to only PART of the repeater spectrum. DMR repeaters being REQUIRED to be high profile and FREE access to all licensed users would also need to be a requirement. In addition, because of the way DMR works, the coordination would not only need to be for the frequencies but the time slots, and talk group assignments as well. And that is where it would all fall apart. The equipment isn't hard to find. And groups could assemble to fund the repeater purchase. So, no big deal there. But Talk Group assignments and management would need to be figured out. That would most likely fall on the repeater owners to do. And ongoing management of that could turn ugly quick. As long as the person was available and willing to do it, things would be fine. But once that person wanted his life back, then the problems with getting ID's and talk group assignments would become a problem. And that's not something that anyone is going to want to do. We see this here to some extent getting repeater node numbers assigned. It's not automated, requiring ONE person to manage all that. And I am not complaining, but it's not a 24 hour process to get it done. Which is what people would want. And if that person sells off the repeater, then it's up to the new owner to manage it or NOT. They can very easily flip it to analog and it's just gone. Now if you bring LINKING into the mix, it gets MORE complicated. Not only can subscriber ID's not overlap, but repeater ID's can't either. So MORE management is required. If someone was profiting, then it's manageable. But we can't profit from it, because that's the GMRS rules. So it's just not even feasible to attempt linking. And even managing a single repeater in a big city with hundred's of users would be more than I would ever want to take on personally. You may have time for that. I don't. P25 on GMRS. Slightly more feasible. Can be linked flat (no talk groups but COULD be done). Still some management, but just at an infrastructure level. Could be relegated to one or two repeater pairs nationwide. Doesn't interfere as bad with analog. Still would create issues with analog repeaters however. Doesn't use the pulsed transmission that the subscribers do so the analog receivers don't have to deal with the constantly changing SNR that is present with DMR. Ham spectrum reallocated to GMRS. Yeah, not gonna happen. We don't even have a group to go lobby for something like this where the ham's have the ARRL. Then there are the technical issues that you would face with being 20 something Mhz apart and needing super broadband EVERYTHING to make that work. Too many reasons that will not work. Coupled with if you want MORE spectrum to communicate on, you can go get a ham license and do that. And once you have a ham license you can do MANY things we can't do on GMRS. But I will say this. If all the GMRS operators on this board were to figure out where their local AllStar node was and we were to link them all together and have a net some Friday night on that network, the hams would flip the hell out. It would be more traffic than their repeaters had seen in years. ANd it could be echo link or allstar. It would only require the linking. My guess is they would never allow it again due to the traffic load.

What? Creating a context so that you can create a platform to contradict someone? OK, since you said that, I will accept that as being the case. Not my specific intent here, but since you choose to point one that was your motivation, I can go with it. Now of course, context, presentation, and lastly grammar is EVERYTHING. You made that as a statement, rather than a question that would imply that I was the one taking refuge. But your presentation is all wrong. By taking what I said, out of context, and then making a specific statement about what I said, you in effect agreed with it. And in doing so implied YOU were the one taking refuge. Which of course is actually the case. And with reviewing other posts you have created over time, taking those into account along with this, it creates an even better context that it's indeed true that you like creating platforms out of thin air to contradict other's for no other reason than the act of doing it. But that's ok. We all are motivated by different things. And have different personality traits that don't always mess real well with others, but we all seem to be able to more or less get along. And how did a discussion about digital modes on ham radio devolve into this nonsense anyway? I had to go back and look and here's what I am seeing. LScott commented about hams complaining about expensive microphones and then dropping money HF gear. This was a reply to a comment about HHCH configurations which are a thing with commercial P25 gear. So still technically on topic. You disagreed and said cheap wasn't 'appropriate'. Couple comments of real world situations about hams, still within the overall subject matter. And again, you needed to contradict things and point out analogies being stretched. Couple more comments,,, then I posted and you again needed to contradict me, and LScott. And here we totally hijacked once again. I rebut, you again take what I said totally out of context and attempt to further your straw man position. And here we are. So I guess the question becomes, just what is it that motivates you to come in and hijack threads on here? ANd what exactly in this ENTIRE thread that you posted has ANYTHING to do with P25 on ham radio to begin with. I see you contradicting others. I see you create a context out of thin air to further your contradictions, but I don't see ONE DAMN THING that has anything to do with digital VOICE on ham radio.

Well, I was trying to keep stupid out of it. But yes, stupidity is certainly a factor.

I see the difference in the context that you are trying to apply to it. But that's not what he was getting at and you seemed to need to contradict him so you created that implied context so you could. And cheap tires are still regulated. I figured that someone from California, land of CARB and other 'additional' vehicle regulations would recognize that. For ANY tire to be installed on a motor vehicle that is used on any public road in the US it must be DOT approved. Your implications are they are buying farm tires or some other non-approved and untested equipment. That's not gonna ever be the case. Both of us were only indicating that some people are cheap. They spend money on certain items but even with spending incredible amounts of money on PARTS of their projects, they cut corners on other parts.

NO actually he's NOT. I have seen more than one setup where the radio and antenna system was a combined total of over 10K and they used RG-8X coax to connect it. That was ONE. Second was a big ICOM, huge money. Reused cable that the braid was showing connected to a Yagi that was missing elements. Thought the expensive radio would compensate for the broke ass antenna. It didn't.

OK, you are NOT going to get enough physical separation of the antenna's to get it to work correctly. So that's the FIRST problem. Second issue is you are using radios that due to their size have little to no filtering. If the thing was to talk more than 100 yards, you would be doing good. And your 'power robbing' duplexers are the ONLY way it could possibly work. Let me run this down in real numbers in a manner that will make sense. And the ONLY way you could POSSIBLY get it to work. If you can get the antenna's 20 feet apart on a vertical plane. Meaning one antenna 20 feet directly above the other then you will get about 15 to 20 dB of isolation. For every 20 feet increase you can add 10 dB to that. You need 80 to 90 dB of isolation for a repeater to work correctly. So if you can place the top antenna 200 or so feet above the other one, then you have enough isolation. Of course the bottom antenna that you are transmitting on is at ground level, and the receive antenna is 200 feet in the air so it will hear ok, but not be able to talk very far. Second issues is unless you dump a bunch of money into 7/8 hard line (with 1.5 dB of loss per 100 foot length) the loss on the receive side is going to be higher than the loss of a 'power robbing' duplexer. But it's STILL a portable with poor shielding, so the transmit RF is still gonna get in the radio and screw with the repeater function and desense the receiver in that hand held. You could of course run a 200 foot linking cable down the side of the 200 foot tower linking the radios together, but that will pick up a ton of static and electrical noise and cause other problems. Bottom line is this, you have never seen this work because it don't. ANd no amount of screwing with it is gonna get it to work. If you have a spot that has 1000 feet of elevation over the area you are wanting to cover and you have a repeater, move the thing. Install a LOW GAIN antenna, I would say 3dBi MAX. Reason is that an antena with gain is NOT an amplifier. If can't increase the signal level through amplification so it does it by concentrating the radiation pattern. A unity gain antenna has a pattern that looks basically like a donut from the side. A gain antenna flattens that donut on a vertical plane. So the pattern goes up and down in equal amounts. If you get too much UP then the area under the antenna has no coverage. Which does you no good.

Roger Beeps are a love it hate it sort of thing and everyone seems to have an opinion. I have heard guys that complained about MDC on the air, which is NOT a Roger Beep but a digital Identifier that will display on most radios if they are programmed to decode it. That would be the 'squawk' that you might have heard after a user talks, it you were wondering. A lot of folks find the Roger Beeps annoying. And I tend to agree with that myself. I do have a Roger Beep in one of my CB radios that has had significant modifications to enhance the 'loudness' of the radio when transmitting, it also has a double ping that plays every time I key up and an echo board to further enhance the annoying factor when I get on the radio. It's setup SPECIFICALLY to be obnoxious and to stir up hate and discontent. I use other radios when I am just trying to talk on CB in a friendly manner and not irritate everyone on the air ways. And as OffRoaderX mentioned. The ones you DO need to be concerned with are the repeater owners. They put in a TON of effort and money to keep equipment on the air for your enjoyment. And making them mad is a good way to not have a local repeater any more since they ARE the ones that can just pull the plug on the whole thing and sell it off on eBay. Don't be the guy that gets the local repeater unplugged. To the creating havoc with the repeater system. Not likely. I will say that there are some repeater controllers that can be configured to listen for DMTF and when it hears ANY DTMF it tries to do something with it. That can cause issues with a controller. But a couple tones played as a roger beep should NOT have effect on a controller.

Is this for a base or a mobile? IF it's a mobile, you are gonna be restricted to RG-58 or possibly LMR240 due to the size and flexibility of the cable. For a base you certainly have other options, but again the length of the run is going to determine whats needed and your budget is gonna be the other determining factor. Running the NEEDED cable length and not going overboard and having a big coil of cable someplace is the best way to limit losses. So figure that out and get what's needed and not some fixed length of cable. The reason I mentioned budget. If youget 100 feet of LMR-900 cable. The cable will cost more than the radio did. Average price on that cable is 8.50 a FOOT. So, 850 bucks for 100 feet PLUS 100 bucks average for ONE connector.... you will need two. So the cable run would be a grand. Guessing that you aren't ready to drop a grand on a cable run for a GMRS base station. But maybe you are. Here's the rub with cable loss and the CB radio mentality when it comes to wattage. Professionals in the two way industry all use dB for figuring the stuff out. ANd the really important part is receiver sensitivity. Depending in the radio, you need between -118 and -116 dBm to open a receiver. Typically -112 to -110dBm to reach 12dB sinad and -105dBm for a full quieting signal. SO to go from a noisy signal to a strong signal you will need 6dB of change. In watts, that's going from 25 watts to 100 watts. But there are other factors like antenna gain that play into that. And an antenna with 6 dB of gain over an antenna that has zero gain is going to be a LOT less expensive than 100 feet of that LMR900 cable that was mentioned and have the same perceived effect. Sure you can put that sort of antenna up on top of the 1000 dollars in cable, and have a really good setup. But again, that's a TON of money to spend for GMRS radio base stations. I have a repeater running 50 watts into a combiner network that has 6dB of loss. With the cables and such in the building I get 18 watts going out of the building to the antenna. Antenna is 8dBi of gain, and is 180 feet in the air. Cable loss is 3dB due to the length. The repeater in certain directions talks 50 miles. So, does cable loss have an effect, sure. But it's NOT as much as you would think. But antenna height is obviously more important than cable loss. And I am running LDF5-50 hardline which has similar loss figured to the LMR900 that was mentioned. But my run is over 300 feet due to the routing of the cable from the building to the tower.

There is a groups of 3 or four of us that use it. The linked repeater has some traffic on it but not a lot. Need to find a better resting talk group to park it on to drum up additional traffic. IN addition to my VHF liinked repeater, there are two more VHF two UHF and one or two 900 Mhz repeaters that are on the air in the greater Columbus area. There is also a significant system over on Dayton Ohio that gets some use. I am considering having a discussion with that group and connecting a repeater to that system. Due to the way it's linked, the repeater could be any band I desired. Again, if there is gonna be activity on it, I am all for it and I believe it will draw people in that want to talk. I have three GMRS repeaters on the tower right now. The 600 which is linked to the MidWest system gets hundreds of PTT's a day. The 675 machine gets some traffic, and the 725 is pretty much silent. Just like the hoards of ham repeaters around here. We get some DMR traffic from other area's but almost none locally. Far as the radios. I didn't discuss the boxes of CDM's I have since they are not digital. Or any of the Hytera or other stuff. But I have a BUNCH of gear. My stuff in general stops at 900Mhz but I am looking at getting into satellite comms and may well be looking to add 1.2 and 2.4 Ghz stuff for that endeavor at some point. I will add this. Most of the P25 gear I have has some level of encryption on it. Not that I use that normally, but in certain situations, OPSEC becomes a thing. Haven't gone as far as getting FHSS radios yet, but I wouldn't turn them down if the right deal presented it self. And there may or may not be a repeater on the air that is mixed mode but hasn't got a normal NAC in it that will pass secure traffic if the need was to arise. It may or may not be connected to a large battery bank as well that will have solar and possibly wind generation charging ability later this year. Wife is NOT a radio operator, but there will be a radio in her vehicle that might possibly have the ability to utilize such a system. And there is currently a portable radio and charger kit in that vehicle that might have that ability. And again. Operating digital radio with encryption on ham or GMRS is illegal. But operating it on a commercial frequency, is legit if the license has the correct emission designation on it. Working on that too.

Far as what I have. Number of (5 or 6) VHF XTS2500's with P25 Couple UHF XTS2500's on UHF With P25 XTS2500 on 900 with P25 XTS5000 VHF and UHF P25 Several XTL5000's on UHF P25 Couple XTL5000's on VHF including a High power unit. P25 XTL2500 on 900Mhz P25 APX 7500 on VHF P25 APX 8500 all band on VHF/UHF P25 Several Astro Spectra's both mid and high power with P25 Icom ID-5100 D-Star radio. Still in the box. Have never powered it up. Two VHF Quantars (one on the air) connected to the p25.link system on P25. Repeater is multimode and runs on Analog as well Couple UHF Quantars.... need to convert from R-1 to R-2 to put on ham and GMRS. Few MTR3000's that are DMR able, but not programmed for it currently. One on ham the other is one of the three GMRS repeaters. Four XPR8400's that are UHF waiting for repair (board swap) due to bad finals. One will become a GMRS linked repeater once repaired. Large number of UHF XPR6550's that are programmed for ham DMR, GMRS and some Itinerant UHF's freqs for tower work. Two 6 slot chargers full plus a number of others. XPR 6300 on 900 Few XPR6550's that are VHF one of those MMDVM hot spot things. Unknown number of XPR4550 UHF and VHF radios that are console resources. Not sure of number right now, have four sitting here right now and at least 12 more at the tower. I do some DMR on Ham. Do a bit of P25 on ham VHF. Working on conversions for UHF and moving a couple 800 Quantars to 900. Talked on D-Star once. No wires, fusion, NXDN, or other digital.

Small correction. PART 95.735 is NOT for CB radio (40 channel CB radio between 29.965 and 27.405) It IS for remote control devices, typically model aircraft, cars and boats that had radios that typically were used two frequencies that were between the assigned channels of CB radio. Those transmitter units (remote controls) did NOT carry a type acceptance due to their low power not requiring one. Radio shack actually sold a car alarm that used one of those frequencies for a pager that was tied to the car alarm unit. There was also a Class A CB radio service that was between 460 and 470 Mhz that predated and ultimately became GMRS. According to Wikipedia that occurred in the 70's so there is no telling if some of the regulations are still referring to GMRS as CB. As mentioned before, it ain't written to be real understandable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_band_radio Channels were 3A 26.995 MHz 7A 27.045 MHz 11A 27.095 MHz 15A 27.145 MHz 19A 27.195 MHz

Yep. I have done this many times. Couple things to be mindful of. If you are on the side of a concrete silo with no roof, then it's obviously gonna be side mounted to the wall. If there is a metal dome on it you want on top if possible. Of course you need to limit the antenna size due to the twisting moment at the base. So no huge antenna's. Easiest way to deal with the antenna cable running down vertically is attach it to the outside of the vertical bar on the ladder. But you are going to need to fasten it to something more often than just the ladder mounts that are every 10 feet. Needs to be 6 feet or less between the attachment points. If it's a flat side unit, you could use Tek screws and one hole clamps for conduit when it was empty so you can get all the metal shavings out of it. If its' ribbed, you are about gonna have to use the ladder. Weather proofing the repeater. Easiest way is a water proof box or put in in the head house in a fairly clean area. I realize that clean in a head house is a oxy-moron, but it can be done if you are willing to maintain it and blow the dust out of it a few times a year, and about every other week in the fall when you are drying and putting away. If you have silo's you know what I am talking about. QUALITY equipment here is a MUST. You have to spend the money on a real repeater that's sealed. I wouldn't consider any other repeater than an MTR from Motorola in that environment. The last system I out in was 3 XPR repeaters on a feed mill. They got installed in a weather proof cabinet on TOP of the mill due to the dust. Too much of a concern for the repeaters becoming an ignition source to have them in the building at all. Mind you they run 10 million bushel a year through that mill. It's a big operation for a large egg farm. But it can be done. It's gonna be more expensive to put it in, just like everything else is that has power going to it, but at least you are not paying reoccurring rent on a tower site. And I am gonna guess it will work well due to most farm's sit in the middle of pretty flat land.

Back to the topic at hand. I am a ham. The guy that owns the tower is as well and got his GMRS license a few years ago for family use. He got me turned on to it and actually gave me the money to get my license (70 bucks). I don't remember if I was on here first or the MidWest group on facebook. Talked to Corey and Buddy with that group and got interested in linking. I never looked back. Started with putting a single repeater at the tower and now have three. The first one is the owners call sign on my hardware. The other two are all me. Built the interface out of a CM108 USB dongle sound card and just kept rolling. Got a group that's local that gets on a chats on the 675 locally and many of them get on the linked system as well. I wanted something on the air that folks would actually use. And I wasn't disappointed. The 600 (midwest link machine) gets hundreds of PTT's a day and is busier than all the other local ham repeaters combined. Next project for the site is to link my VHF P25 repeater to the P25 system in western Ohio around Dayton. They are seeing a good bit of traffic on it and I am hopeful that they are interested in furthering their coverage to the Columbus area.

We were both into 2M SSB at the time. Hence the ability to crank up that sort of ERP. I believe he had a rather large tube amp that would get close to legal limit on ham and a sat of stacked 15 or 18 element hand built beams. He could FAR exceed my little 140 watt solid state amp. I haven't talked to him since I put the SSB rig away. Working on getting that stuff back out and looking to setup a satellite earth station this spring. 40 foot tower with proper beams and a rotator built out of a HUGE outdoor camera mount I found this year at Dayton. The thing took me 20 minutes to drag back the the truck that was 50 yards away because I kept setting it down due to the weight. And I lug two 50 pound siren batteries around all the time, one in each hand. This was much heavier. At least I know the tower (Rohn65) will hold the thing without an issue.

200 watts huh? Try for real 2.5KW ERP on VHF. Story behind this. Local repeater was acting up one night during a net. It had basically gone deaf due to the crap duplexer it had that was older than sin. Several of us get on and are having problems getting in. One of the local super hammies with his Miracle Ear service monitor tells us we ALL are having issues with OUR gear and the repeater is just fine. He had just looked at it. SO I am on the beam already, running about 2 watts with 13dB of gain on the beam. Crank up to 10 watts, still noisy. OK, MO PAWA... 140 watts in the the beam. Still noisy. Switch over to the repeater OUTPUT frequency and blow through the thing blanking it out just like the guys on the bowl (ch6). About that time a guy comes in from 60 miles away telling me to turn it down I am 40 over at that distance. Told him I was trying to prove a point. Several others keyed up and gave me hell for tossing a signal like that at the repeater as well. Of course, Miracle Max Throws his ID and clears the frequency. They finally got the hint and replaced the duplexer with another antique that wasn't much better. And that's FAR from the only story I can tell you about ham's and their silliness. But I don't really want to turn this into a ham bashing thread. But that would be fun.

There's actually people to talk to on GMRS. Ham is in an activity null. At least with repeater activity, at least in my area. I have a console system here that I use to talk on the radio. It has 16 resources on it. Four are GMRS, six are the local high profile ham repeaters. I hear GMRS traffic on and off all day, especially on MidWest. The only consistent ham stuff I hear is the club net and the ARES net on Monday and Tuesday nights on the local repeater. ANd as soon as the net is over it goes silent. No one even hangs around to chat. Now that repeater VOICE ID's every 9 minutes. And it has a second ID board that runs on the quarter hour. So that one if you time it right will ID 3 times in a row. That drives off he users. But none of the repeaters are active very much other than that.

Hmmm, UHF is line of site. The horizon at ground level on flat land is 11 miles. At 100 feet it's 14 miles. So you would need to know how high the repeater antenna is in the air to do the actual calculation. https://www.qsl.net/w4sat/horizon.htm Link to the calculator. But if the antenna is at 200 feet for the repeater, to have true LOS (line of site) from your base station YOUR antenna would need to be around 500 feet in the air to have LOS at 50 miles. Now, not knowing where you are, what the topography of your area is (flat, hilly, mountainous) I can't say for sure what would be required. With both specific locations there are ways of figuring it out however. Try RadioMobile. It's a free software package that references different online topo maps to figure out the LOS heights required and what the actual path loss would be. You can change antenna height, antenna gain and power levels in the software to figure out whats required. It will also calculate the expected coverage mapping for a repeater or base station with its specific parameters.

I guess the question at this point is WHY is there 5 pages of discussion on a topic that is simple to answer. A radio that is PART 90 certified for commercial radio use is acceptable and legal for use on GMRS. Modified ham radios are NOT PART 90 certified and therefore are NOT allowed to be used on GMRS Although the will 'work'. This applies to repeaters as well as portables and mobiles. We seem to want to beat this stuff into the ground here and I fail to understand why that is. GMRS is in the middle of the UHF PART 90 frequency allocation. So from a technical standpoint, there would be no reason to think they wouldn't be allowed. Keep in mind that a ham radio for UHF (420 to 450Mhz) operated on GMRS is being operated 17Mhz outside of it's design parameters. Where a commercial radio that is PART 90 (450 to 470/512Mhz) is running INSIDE the design bandwidth of the radio. Now of course, there are considerations for power output that have to be followed. Some frequencies are lower power and some mobiles and portables will NOT turn down far enough to be legal to operate on the simplex GMRS frequencies. So you simply set those channels as receive only or don't program them in radios that can't turn down to a legal power output level.

Get permission from the owner. Easiest way to do that is right here on the site. Go to Maps, find the repeater near you and see if it requires permission. If so click the request permission button and fill out the forum. You will need a full account to do this. A guest account will not allow you to pake requests for access to repeaters I don't believe.

This is completely normal. If the other repeater is not being interfered with, which would seem to be the case just run with it. You seem to be in a location that there is a good bit of overlap, so you should be aware of what the other repeater is doing (active or not) when you are talking on the other repeater. But past that, I wouldn't be too concerned.