DONE

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.

Yeah, I call that 'short keying' but it's the same thing. I don't think people realize that radio repeaters are a community. It's like having a meeting room that people randomly go into just to say hello, or see what the topic of the day is. When someone steps in the room and just begins chatting about the topic, or another topic (worse) and doesn't let others in the conversation, the people will leave the room and go on about their day. When that person or persons that seems to force themselves into the conversation and then derail it, people will refrain from even going into the room. You bring up 2 meter ham repeaters. And this area had someone show up on that repeater and would derail any conversation being had, bring it to something he wanted to know and would camp out on the repeater all day trying to discuss that topic. Of course this was the busiest repeater in the area with the best coverage footprint. The problem was the kid (under 15 kid) was on the spectrum. Now I am not trying to attack folks that are mentally challenged, but this kid had ZERO sense of what was polite, standard communication ability or a proper method of having a discussion. Adding to that, he would come up with the wildest crap to ask for help on. He sat one day asking everyone that got on the repeater why his home brew foot switch he made from a couple pieces of wood, a door hinge and a spring was constantly keying up his radio. Mind you he had one wire connected to one half of the metal hinge and the other wire connected to the other half of the METAL hinge. Of course this creates a short, the two hinge plates and electrically connected, and he was told that by EVERYONE that he ask. That was like 10 or 15 people. But he just kept asking the same question, thinking the answer might change or something. So everyone left the repeater and went to the UHF repeater since he didn't have a UHF radio. The 2 meter repeater went silent. The repeater owner went to the kids house to talk with his parents. They were understanding, we thought, so they decided to get him a different radio, that was DUAL BAND. And that was the end of ham repeaters in my area. He finally got bored or something and stopped talking on the radio. But the damage was done. Turns out he would talk on the radio for hours. His parents weren't really monitoring his conversations, and had no idea what was going on. They just knew he wasn't hounding them, so they weren't about to be involved. Point is that one person can ruin a repeater for everyone.

The lip mount (at least the ones with attachment screws) are grounded and would not require a 'no ground plane' type of antenna. Mounting an antenna on a car or truck is going to have the pattern effected by where it's mounted to some degree. The 'ground plane' of the antenna (car body) helps to bring in an or direct the signal out of an antenna. So if you have an antenna on the right side of a vehicle, the pattern will skew to the left to some degree. If it's not mounted at the highest point on the vehicle, some parts of the vehicle that are higher than the antenna will block some part of the signal to and from the antenna. But, eliminating all those things required a hole in your car for an antenna mount. And some folks can't bring themselves to drill that hole. Some are driving lease vehicles that they can't drill the hole. Others are limited by the fact they trade their car's in every 70,000 miles and feel that it brings down the value of the car. Then there is the 'wife' variable. The "You're not gonna put that shit on our car" which typically applies to ANY antenna on a vehicle (I know all about this one). But if you are running around in a vehicle that you are gonna keep until it's reached the 'beater with a heater' status and not traded in with the idea that if you keep it the value will go down, or any of that, I would say just drill that hole. Now what a 'no ground plane' antenna is good for is situations or vehicles that don't have a good ground plane to begin with. Vehicles with fiberglass roof's and panels that are not going to generate a good ground plane. Boats are another application for this type of antenna. But you need to understand that a no ground plane antenna has a significant limitation, that being gain. That type of antenna is designed to create a ground plane. This is done by the antenna being a dipole design. Meaning there is a bottom element and a top element. And that is where you loos the ability to have significant gain. Dipole antenna designs where one element is sort of positive and the other element is negative (the actual voltages change due to it being an AC voltage) stacking elements for the sake of more gain is not possible in a mobile antenna. Any 'gain' listed in the antenna spec will be dBi and not dBd. The dBi gain number is based on an isotropic radiator which is a 'paper' antenna that doesn't really exist. And dBd is gain over a dipole. Of course a dipole antenna can't have gain over that type of antenna. And ALL dipoles will exhibit some gain over an isotropic radiator due to the pattern difference in the antenna designs. I realize that is getting sort of technical. But it's something that you can google and research for a better understanding of what I am referring to, and you might even learn something about antenna's.

Honestly both. But I am of the opinion that was part of the reason the ham repeaters went quiet. Not being able to have a 3 or more person conversation becomes frustrating because of repeater hogs that can't seem to wait their turn, or will come in and derail a conversation. When that happens others will sign out and turn their radio off. The problem comes when it's consistent and the person who gets frustrated with that just doesn't turn their radio on it the morning. They become another silent license holder that doesn't bother.

yeah,, that seems like a good idea. Ham's and their proclivity for chastising other operators for minor infractions of the regulations and the other BS that has driven people away from ham radio. So they (or at least this clown) wants to try to take over GMRS and bring that same crap here. We have enough problems with people not being able to figure out a basic round table of more than two people in a conversation, and they want to saddle us with this too. No, just No... GMRS is fine the way that it is. Leave it to hell alone. If you don't like it, turn your radio off, or back to the ham frequencies and listen to the dead quiet on the ham repeaters because of being dumb like this and driving people away.

Cable loss, and power level. Here's the math part if you care. Lets say that you have 3dB of loss in your feed line to the antenna. So that means that if you are pushing 20 watts into the the cable at the bottom, 10 watts gets to the antenna. Now that same loss happens to the reflected power. If you have 2 watts reflected, then you will only see 1 watt of reflect in the meter. Now lets remove the 20 watt radio and hook up a 4 watt radio. You have 4 in, and 2 at the antenna. You then have .2watts reflect, and .1 watt (100mW) shown as reflected power. The meter will have a hard time even seeing .1 watt of power and doesn't really have the accuracy to correctly measure that small level of power. So it gets inaccurate. Same thing happens with other radio services like ham when you significantly increase the power level. A guy running 100 watts may not see a significant amount of reflect at that power level, but when he increases to 1000 watts, it shows up. This is why when you are using a Bird watt meter to make SWR readings, you use a 1 or 5 watt slug to take the reflected power reading and not the 50 or 100 watt slug you are using for forward power. That 100 watt slug is not going to accurately show you a few watts of reflect. You need a slug that will properly indicate the lower power level. AND, you need to take into account the cable loss for an accurate reading.

Well BaoFeng was funky bowel to me. So these would be funky poo. It's all a bunch of crap at the end of the day.

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.

I guess the important question here is why would you be looking for adapters instead of the correct connectors for the application to begin with? Yes, there are different levels of quality and pricing with RF connectors. The stuff for microwave test beds and maintenance that are made from stainless steel and come with little charts with the attenuation factors for the frequency range the connector is good for can cost you as much as you spent for your whole antenna system for a single Male SMA to Female N adapter (paid 200 bucks for one) it had a like expectancy before it would go out of spec of 100 insertions. Do you need those for GMRS, NO. But on the other end of it, I have bought the cheap Amazon stuff and had the nut's fall off the PL259 and N type connectors on their first use. That's adapter stuff. But connectors are the same way. If you are going to be using LMR series cable, make the investment in the crimping tool for LMR 400 (and 600 if you plan on working with it) and use the Times Microwave connectors that are designed for that cable. LMR braid doesn't solder well at all. Leaving you with the choices of crimp or compression type connectors. The connectors are captive pin if you get the EZ style connectors which makes using them EZ. There are people that will tell you that captive pin is junk and you have to solder center pins. Personal experience from over 14 years of using them says otherwise. I have NEVER had a failure of a connector that was correctly installed to begin with fail in the field. And remember that the connector behind the radio isn't the one that goes bad, it's the one that's in the air connecting the antenna to the coax that you need to be worried about. Because that's the hard one to get to. Yes, the connectors are 20 to 30 bucks a piece, but if you avoid needing to climb your tower or take your pole down to access the failed connector in a year, it's cheaper labor wise to use the better stuff.

Well, the commercial radio method of conducting this test is with a signal generator and an isolation Tee and something that will measure 12dB sinad. You inject signal into the isolation Tee that is connected to the receiver of the repeater. You adjust the signal generator so the test equipment indicates 12dB Sinad which is a 12 dB signal to noise ratio. Once the initial number for signal generation is reached you turn on the transmitter and then increase the output of the signal generator until you have again achieved 12 dB Sinad. The difference is the loss of receive sensitivity that the repeater is experiencing. The actual signal level numbers are NOT applied to the effect of the loss, you are ONLY looking at the difference. You can also before or after do a signal test for 12 dB Sinad directly into the receiver, which will give you a real world number of what the receiver is capable of with out the interfering signal present from the repeaters transmitter. This number typically is going to be between '117 and -119dBm of signal level for most repeaters. Some are better some aren't quiet that good. Now you apply the change in signal level required to bring the receiver back to 12dB Sinad and ADD (remember it's a negative number) that to the direct receiver test. Not running a duplexer and getting that level of isolation (typically 75 to 95 dB) and instead applying your isolation numbers of only 38 to 47 dB, you are giving up 30 dB of signal sensitivity more or less. Meaning instead of -115dBm of required signal, you need -85 dBm of signal level to achieve the same level of receiver performance. Putting that into perspective, a typical subscriber receiving a signal from a transmitter at -95dBm signal level will indicate a full signal (four bars) on the front of it. It's PAST the level needed for a typical receiver to have a FULL QUIETING signal. And you are going to need 10dB MORE signal to achieve 12dB sinal which has a degree of noise in the receive signal but is fully copyible but is NOT full quieting. And while I sort of understand your stance on using this solution for emergency repeaters during an activation, there might still be a better way. Now for VHF, you are hung. There is no simple way around a duplexer on VHF. And if we are talking about HAM radio with the 600Khz frequency split, for a standard repeater, your really hung. And tuning is going to be needed. But there are even options here. The first being a set of high Q pass cans that are tuned for each frequency (single can for each) and dual antenna's. This is a far better option than just relying on horizontal separation for isolation. If you can work that out, you will see a marked improvement in repeater performance. It's not going to be a good as a duplexer, but it's FAR superior to what you are doing now. GMRS isn't that way depending on the type of duplexer you choose. A Notch duplexer (small mobile types) can be tuned for the middle of the repeater frequency range and be used for that full range with some degradation on the band edges. A pass / notch duplexer, especially a good one isn't going to allow for that. The SWR the transmitter see's will climb too fast for it to work. Now, one thing you can do with the ham allocation is look at the probable repeater pair assignments that will be offered and do something similar with those. Tuning up a couple duplexers, as long as the frequencies are close enough together for them to fit in the notch duplexer. And please understand, I am not trying to poo poo on what you are doing. I am only trying to give you options and point out the math on what you can gain by taking a different path.

Well, yeah, I don't have much invested in my setup either. The batteries are as mentioned before. I get them for the core charge on them. Now the rectifier (48 volt charger and maintainer for those of you that aren't aware) came from a system wide upgrade a customer did. He got a number of spares from another agency that did a similar upgrade and I ended up with two of those when he upgraded his and they would no longer act as spares for him. I got the two 6 bay frames (6 module power supplies) with the DC breaker panel and monitoring unit. I also ended up with 25 or so power modules. So I have ZERO need for 48 volt power at this point. I am actually only running 2 of the 6 modules currently as that's all that is needed with my current load to maintain the batteries. The 48 to 24 volt buck converters were pulls from a telco site that is owned by a tower company I do work for from time to time. They had no need of them and they were given to me. I had to replace the capacitors in them to get them up and going again, but they work fine. I also was able to get the 24 volt DC distribution panels from the site. I also picked up a couple 70 amp feed panels at Hamvention one year for 10 bucks each. Those are in the repeater racks distributing the 24 volt power in those racks to the repeaters. Plan is to add a 48 to 12 volt high current buck converter for the 12 volt gear, or maybe do several of them (one per control station rack) since the majority of the power I use is 12 volt. I am looking to start converting my Ethernet switches and routers over to DC as well so I can run all the critical gear on DC plant.

Yeah, back to the topic. While they are NOT cheap per battery, the Interstate DCM0075 battery seems to be a real workhorse and has a lifespan when properly float charged and maintained of at least 8 years. I have a number of these that were pulled at 3 years from being in tornado sirens that act as the battery plant for my 12 volt system currently. THe 12 volt system predates my 48 volt system by a few years and it's still going strong. The 48 volt system is similar but uses 110 amp hour batteries that are also pulls from equipment that by code has to have new batteries every three years.

Well, I sort of have issue with that. But I also don't know if his situation changed, rent got increased or what motivated him to decide to do that. So I am not going to disagree with the actions of that repeater owner, because I simply don't know why he did it to begin with. I will say that there is a huge increase in GMRS users lately. I am getting 4 or 5 new requests per week, and I have one repeater that's linked and one that's stand alone. Both are seeing increased traffic month to month. And with that you are going to get some folks that have it in their head that paying for a license gives them access to anything they can program in their radio. Of course that's not gonna be teh case in all situations. And, you are going to have people that want to cause trouble, because it's their nature to do so. You can always contact the owner and ask why, and if he's wanting a reasonable fee, make a decision to drop him a few bucks to access his repeater. He might just give you permission since he's not had problems with you to begin with. It's hard to say.

Well, I am in a unique situation that allows me to NOT charge for access. The antenna system, equipment and all the rest was assembled from gear that I had. We have the expense of maintaining the site since it's owned privately and therefore we maintain it, pay the power bill, taxes and the like. But I will tell you that if I had to buy the stuff that makes up the repeater system, it would be thousands of dollars. If we couldn't climb the tower which is the case if you don't own the site, that's thousands in labor. Point is that a paid membership repeater that has reasonable coverage in your area isn't a bad investment. Situations like mine are all but non-existent. So it you are paying 100 bucks or less a year to access a top notch repeater system that covers your area well. You would be YEARS in just breaking even doing your own thing with your own repeater. And frankly, guys don't always have the knowledge to do it correctly and bringing in a person that is knowledgeable is costly too. I use to poo poo on the idea of a pay to play system. But they are certainly a good option for someone that has no space, location or ability to put up a repeater. And the pay repeaters, if nothing else typically have excellent coverage.

Now this is a PERSONAL OPINION. But I will voice it here. When you put a repeater into service, you effectively take that repeater pair away from anyone else that might want to use it. Now the regulations for GMRS allow for this to a point. And for a small footprint repeater that covers a town, city or other small area, ok what ever. But when you build a wide area repeater, and do similar restriction, no one in that coverage area can use that pair effectively. When you decide to build MULTIPLE wide area coverage repeaters like that with similar restriction, then you are going above and beyond in being a dick. You hve now restricted multiple repeater pairs for your own groups communication. If you are going to build wide area coverage systems, they need to be accessible to all license holders. You have stopped their ability to do their own thing without causing 'interference' to your system and in effect are creating interference for the communication of others by doing so.

Well, I can't speak to the repeaters you mentioned. I can tell you what I personally have bit since I am in Ohio that will do you little good. If you search my other posts, it's been spelled out a number of times. But I will say that my stuff will stay up for WEEKS at a minimum, and I work to increase that time whenever possible. All that being said. And as mentioned, you absolutely can attempt to work with a local repeater owner to add battery backup to their system. But there are things that you need to know about that system before going down that road. First is what repeater and accessories are connected to the repeater in question. If it's just the repeater and it has some level of being connected to battery, then it's a pretty simple operation. If the repeater is connected to a repeater controller, and it's running on a power supply other than the one feeding the repeater it can get more complex, but not impossible by any stretch. So the first thing to find out is what equipment is in place. Then figure out what power requirements it has. Many repeaters have DC input that can either be used as a backup, or as a direct power feed to run the gear. I am doing that. My gear is run from 24 volts, and that power is derived from a 48 volt battery system. Now you don't need to do all that. A string of two batteries will run any legal GMRS repeater since we are limited to 50 watts of output power. If you connect multiple strings in parallel, then you add storage capacity to the battery plant. I currently run 6 strings myself. The batteries are all the same capacity which is 110 Amp Hour. So each individual string will provide 110 Amp Hour, and since there are 6 strings that is 660 Amp Hour of capacity. You do need to run batteries that are similar in capacity to make sure that the power is delivered equally from all strings. Also, it's is REALLY important that each string is individually fused and all feeds from the BUSS are fused when running multiple strings of batteries. Shorts placed across any part of this type of system will flow eminence amounts of current. A short WILL cause a fire. Number 2 wire shorted across 2 or more strings of batteries will become red hot in seconds when these levels of currents start flowing, so proper fusing is not a choice. Besides that you will need a charger that will maintain the batteries and possibly power the repeater while grid power is present.

I don't know what their stock on hand looks like. I would venture a guess that some vendors will buy up certain items and deplete their stock quickly. But those items would be the stuff that has a history of selling. If MFJ shows up to Hamvention this year, that of course will also run those numbers down quickly as well. And while they are claiming that they will be repairing equipment within the warranty period, I don't know what that period is. Also, he's said that he will remain open until he has sold everything off. Again, there are items that are good sellers and no doubt items that might sell one or two a year. I doubt that he will hold out until it's all gone before throwing in the towel. And lets be honest here. The guy is 80 yrs old and MFJ is run as a sole proprietorship. If something happens to him, my guess would be that it will come to a quick end at that point. Any family he has obviously isn't interested in selling ham gear or we wouldn't be having this conversation. I would expect his probate to have an auction to liquidate the assets of the business in that case after some time and again, that would be the end of it. We are back to the fact no one wants to see the business continue to operate, the owner included.

OK, first, multiple PL, which is a 'community repeater' isn't illegal. It has been done in the past and no doubt will continue to be done. Kenwood repeaters are the way to go here as the Motorola stuff requires a secondary repeater controller. Benefits to multi-PL is you can have a repeater that is both public (PL #1) and private (PL #2) and be right with the world. You can communicate via your private PL to your short list of users, and have the repeater open to all users without disturbing you. Now, stuff I am doing. Of course we know that hardline is expensive. Antenna's are too (at least good commercial stuff). I happened into an 8 port transmit combiner that I converted to two 4 port combiners and then added a hybrid combiner port to it in order to run 2 GMRS repeaters (600 and 675) on the same antenna. This consisted of two dual isolators, a 50/50 power divider and the existing can in the combiner. The two repeaters are feeding the two dual isolators, which feed into the power divider (working backwards) and then into the can that feeds the spider going tothe transmit antenna. That combiner also has a ham repeater at 442.775 feeding it. the other combiner only has a single GMRS repeater that belongs to the site owner. There is discussion for additional UHF repeaters to be put at the site for other hams to take advantage of the combiner and antenna heights. Of course, free or even reasonably priced tower access for a ham / gmrs repeater is a rare thing indeed. Other 'odd' things that I am doing. My repeaters are all 24 volt DC powered. MTR2000 /3000's are great repeaters, but they share one failure point. The power supplies in them tend to fail when running them from 110/220. But the 24 volt power input still works fine in most cases of a supply failure. So I am running a stack of 48 volt to 24 volt buck converters in parallel (old telco gear) that are 40 amps each on the 24 volt output. With 5 of these in parallel, I have a sizable supply of 24 volt power. Of course running those does require 48 volts. That is derived from an ElTek rectifier that has 6 30 amp modules in it and charge and maintain 6 strings 110amp hour batteries. The 48 volt also runs other microwave equipment and ethernet switches at the site. Last time I ran the calculations for expected battery capacity based on the load at the time I was at 4 days. So that's a bit outside the norm. Not too far, but not typical. I would have to think on the other 'non-typical' things I am doing with the current setup. While I know how to and have the ability to run receive sites on my setup, I somehow accidentally setup the receive and transmit antenna's in such a way that my coverage both directions is equal on both portable and mobile subscribers. If you can hear it it will hear you. So receive sites would actually break that equal coverage thing I have going on. Now my control station setup is a bit different that most. I am running a Motorola MotoBridge system that locates the radios and the gateways at the tower and the 'consoles' at my house via a microwave link to the tower. I have 2 gateways in active use and 3 more to install and expand the system as needed. The MotoBridge will allow for direct control of APX/XTL and XPR radios. In addition I can do tone remote (have a VHF and UHF MTR setup for tone configured as base stations) local control for basic PTT and audio and they will interface to several other radio types that are no longer around. I was doing this with a Centracom console system but that was becomeing difficult to deal with and I backed away from that for the time being.

The big issue I see with it is that hams are an unhappy bunch when something changes in their orbit. So the issue becomes when some other company buys it and only takes on part of what the company was. If they do Ameritron and Cushcraft but leave MFJ and others to fall, the backlash will be huge. And the truth is that this couldn't have come at a worse time overall. Ham radio as a hobby is waning right now. GMRS is on the upswing and I see that trend continuing. There are NEW manufactures for GMRS radios. Companies that never bothered with GMRS before are getting into the mix because the see profit in it. When was the last time, outside or the CCR's that a new player came the table making ham radios or even accessories that wasn't a small mom and pop place? The ham community is to blame here for the lack of any significant interest in someone buying the business. If there was a profit to be made, some investor would be all over it. But that's not been the case. And I would have to question the statements about affordable gear. Look at the MFJ 259 antenna analyzer, then look at the import nano VNA. How many VNA's can you buy for the price of one 259 or 269. And most of the rest of the MFJ products have counterparts available on Amazon for much less than MFJ's product that performs the same task. Sure there are a few items that will be missed, at least until the rights expire and they start being made under some hard to pronounce named Chinese banner. And the stuff will end up being sold on Amazon and Temu for a third of what MFJ wanted for it. I am not blaming MFJ here. They supported the ham community way past it being profitable. But as I said before, the ham community didn't support them the same way.

I am assuming that you are running a ham radio type controller on the repeater. Commercial repeaters, at least the Motorola stuff will hold off on running the ID until the channel is clear and if someone keys during the repeater ID it will stop and allow the traffic to pass and wait. Mind you that's the IDer that's built into the repeater and is programmed when you setup the other stuff in the repeater. I know that ham controllers will force the ID on the air. Some of them will ID at a lower audio level in the back ground, others will just interrupt the traffic. Of course on HAM radio, the chances of life safety or any sort of priority traffic being interrupted are typically low. With commercial and of course public safety traffic, it's not that way. But the cops and firemen don't really need a repeater controller that keys up and voice ID's with time, temperature, city and state location, PL in use, or any of the other crap that hams have announced on their machines. My machines are all Motorola branded and CW ID from the repeater. The two that have linking controllers do talk. The GMRS link machine will announce when it connects and disconnects. The P25link ham repeater will announce the active talkgroup if certain talk groups it works on when it's keyed for those talk groups. But even those CW ID with stripped PL because I just don't want to hear it. Ham's take the IDing every 10 minutes to an extreme level in some cases. Other hams will get on you, some will even chastise you for forgetting to ID, like it's going to effect them and their license if you get caught not doing it. GMRS isn't that way that I have seen. We remind people when we give them permission to access our repeaters to remember to ID properly, but no one is on there playing radio cop demanding that people ID. Ham unfortunately is that way. I remember getting notices from a local OO when that was still a thing not long after I got my ham license. He was one of those pricks that was mad at the world, the league and the FCC that a no code license had been created. I had a no code license and he didn't like that at all. So when he put his OO (official observer) hat, if you were a no code tech, at 10 minutes and 30 seconds, he grabbed his pen and started writing out a notice for you. And this was to the point that we all thought (the no code license holders) he was autistic or a radio Nazi.

There is something else that I believe contributes to the GMRS interest exceeding the interest in Ham radio. That's the persona of HAM. Ham radio in at least some instances has been portrayed as nerdy. It's connected to big towers in the yard with big antenna's on top of them. Have you ever even seen GMRS portrayed in a TV show or film? If it's radio related, it's always ham. It's some desk full of radios typically with the operator being some level of eccentric, or otherwise odd socially. Since GMRS isn't put on display in any fashion, people don't understand it, and therefore don't believe it's going to make other people think they are some mad scientist if they get involved with it.

It sounds like you are doing range tests from a vehicle. First issue with a yagi, it's directional. Please don't be offended if you knew that. And I am working from an internet post here so I don't 100% understand what's going on. It doesn't seem like you are trying to take to or hear a specific repeater, but that might not be the case. Because the yagi is directional it's only going to work good in one direction. The higher the gain of a yagi, the tighter the front end of it is and the narrower the pattern, meaning a narrower path of coverage. Second thing is are you testing from a vehicle with a portable or a mobile radio with a mounted antenna. Might seem like a silly question, but with all the BS radio distance ratings of radios, if you are new to this and have unreasonable expectations based on what the box or the manufactures advertisements indicate, you certainly will NOT be the first to be dissatisfied with the real world performance.

Straight forward instructions here download the image from elsewhere here on the site download and install WinSCP on your computer download the .sh file below open the .sh file with wordpad on your PC and edit the NODE NUMBER and PASSWORD with the information you got from the site. rename the file once edited and saved to 'repeaterfinder.sh' follow the directions for creating your SD card for the Raspberry Pi. insert the card in the Pi and boot the Pi up. Login to the Pi with the standard credentials provided in the network book (this is also downloaded from this site) Once the Pi is booted and connected to the network you PC running WinSCP is on, connect to the Pi with WinSCP via the IP address of the Pi. Once you are logged in, you will need to copy the 'repeaterfinder.sh' file to the /home/repeater/ directory. When you have copied the file to the Pi, you will need to login to the Pi and navigate to the above directory. Once there type ./repeaterfinder.sh or bash ./repeaterfinder.sh The script will run and configure your Pi as a node with the provided number and password Once the Pi reboots, login into the Pi again, the password this time will be repeater. You will need to change this by typing 'passwd' You will be prompted to type a new password at that point. Remember that you have to make modifications to your router / firewall to allow connection to your node. This information is in the workbook as well. If this is not to be common knowledge please delete this and let me know it's gone. repeaterfindernew.sh

I had grand plans to operate at the tower site, then view the eclipse. Never got to the tower site today at all.

Keep getting this. Sometimes it makes my node unlink No such command 'node-23903*CLI> rpt fun 23903 *321800' (type 'help node-23903*CLI> rpt' for other possible commands) No such command '[Apr 9 00:17:01] NOTICE[673]: chan_iax2.c:9712 socket_process: Registration of '23903' rejected: '<unknown>' from: '34.194.144.228'' (type 'help [Apr 9' for other possible commands) No such command 'node-23903*CLI>' (type 'help node-23903*CLI>' for other possible commands) node-23903*CLI>