WRKC935

fair enough

I was using the UV5R as an example. But radio is radio. And while the big name manufactures DO markup their prices a good bit from teh actual investment in the radio they are selling, there are still technical differences that make them better. Now, granted the WouXun, BaoFeng and other CCR's are FAR less expensive new than the Motorola counterparts, there is a reason for at least PART of that difference. And the part I am pointing out is the selectivity of the receiver. And I will say that they are NOT what they were either. Going back to the Maxtracs and Maratrac's, you have to retune the first filter stages to get them out of band. If you got a 150 - 174 radio and thought you would just put 2 meter frequencies, you found it didn't work worth a hoot. At least until you retuned the front end. They aren't that tight any more. But they aren't bad either. Point is that good filters cost money, and a 200 dollar radio is not gonna have those filters. Now I am not gonna argue that the radio will not perform without those filters, because it will work in most situations. But when you get into an area with a lot of intermod and high RF, those missing filters become apparent. Guessing the Woo Sun or funky bowl radios all come out a different door at the same factory no doubt. And for the record,,, YOU said shitty,,, not me.

They make a blank chrome cap for the NMO mount that has no hole in it. We sue them at the shop to cap NMO mounts on retired public safety vehicles.

Still fighting with this dumb thing. And it's really doing odd things. 725 with 40 in gets me 2 watts out 675 with 40 in gets me 10 watts out 600 is with 40 in is 20 watts. So I decided to disconnect the 600 and 675 and see if it was interacting. It is... I get no output from 725 with 675 disconnected. But it has no effect on 600. Gonna run 600 and 725 in one combiner and 675 in the other combiner and see what that does. I did make new cables from the cans to the star but that had little effect. Gonna play with putting ham stuff in the other ports but I need to get a second transmit antenna in the air so I can split these stupid combiners. I do love radio,,, it's so much fun.

Well, yes, to a point. And then not so much. CCR receivers have the issue of being designed for DC to daylight with no band specific filtering. That band specific filtering keeps stuff that's not in the band that the radio is designed to operate in out of the front end of the radio. I can walk around a hamfest where every third person is transmitting and STILL receiver the guy's signal that's trying to talk to me. I tried that once with a UV5R. It failed miserably.

there was a repeater on DMR on either 625 or 575 a while back here in central Ohio. It seemed to have disappeared now. But yes I have seen it happening too.

Yeah, I have a bad habit of letting trolls get the better of me and reacting poorly.

The issue with this design is receive attenuation. The design is a window filter and then a split duplexer. The Duplexer is going to present 2dB of so of loss and the window filter another 3dB of loss. For transmit, that's significant but will not effect the TX as much as you would think. But on the receive side, it's gonna make a repeater receive rather deaf.Another option is to use the two antenna's and a RX multicoupler and TX combiner. OR an RX multicoupler and the transmit side of this setup. The RX multicoupler is gonna have a window filter to pull out the RX and an amplifier to compensate for the loss in the window filter. Sure it takes an additional antenna, but you can stick 8 transmitters (at a higher loss figure) on a single antenna. And the combiner can be used for ham and GMRS and of course any commercial LMR in between. There are some calculations that need to be done so that there is no interference due to mixing in the combiner but those are simple enough calculations to do. But it does raise a question. Can you increase the power output of a repeater past 50 watts to compensate for the losses in a combiner?

Well, I have these same combiners in other commercial sites running at 25Kc spacing and they were bought that way. Not questioning what you are saying. Just know through research and experience that this model will support 25Kc and not have this level of loss. Gonna try rebuilding the cabling with the odd multiple of a 1/4 wave to the star with the frequencies now in play. If that doesn't work, the unit is actually a DB-4379-8. Meaning original design was 8 transmitters on one antenna. I have the unit split into two 4 port units. If I need more spacing I will put 725 and 600 in this one and put 675 in the other one on a different transmit antenna. It doesn't sound like the ham frequency should be a issue at all though?

So which part of "I turned it all back on" did you miss exactly??? Not to mention the several times I specifically said I OVER REACTED. Guessing you missed that too. And how many repeaters have YOU put on the air up to this point. "When you learn to separate greater good from personal hurts - world will change towards better future." Dude, this is GMRS. We ain't out to change the world here... it's just some radios. You drop some higher calling crap like that and talk about MY ego. Right. But that is pretty funny... I did get a chuckle out of it.

I have a combiner that I am needing to replace the cables between the output cans and the combiner spider. Currently have a loss figure WAY above what the manufacture rated the system at for the spread I have. Freqs are GMRS, spacing is 725, 675 and 600 so .050Mhz and .075Mhz. Combiner is rated to .025 but the losses go up a lot when it's that tight. Any big brains out there that know how the harnesses in these work that can help a brother out?

Gonna get me a roger beep, and door bell for key up and an echo board so I can sound like one of them big rig radio operators... maybe even get me one of them linears.

That's pretty much true actually. Getting an antenna designed for 430 to 450 to work as efficiently and with a proper SWR on 467 Mhz is gonna be difficult if there is much gain to the antenna. And HAM antenna's are pretty much all designed as gain antenna's. I am not saying it will not radiate power at all. Hell I ran a VHF radio on a DB-404 (UHF antenna) and was talking 90 miles with it. Now I was talking to repeaters on tall towers and it was mounted at 110 feet on a tower that sits on the highest point in the whole county and is within 200 feet of the highest point in the entire state (1549 feet, Ohio) but it would have worked BETTER if I was on a proper antenna for the band I was talking on.

Well, mine is a bit different. And the way it's recorded is different too. Asterisks DOES make it very easy. But those recordings are not evidentiary quality. For that you need a logging recorder like what 911 centers use. It' connected to the network an pulls time updates every 10 minutes from a GPS system locally (in the building) that keeps the time stamps correct. The reason it's being recorded is it's a resource on the dispatch console and EVERYTHING on that console is recorded. Just like it's a 911 center or public safety dispatch center. No, it's not a dispatch center currently. But the idea is that it could be if the need arises. There is discussion of putting in public safety resources at the site for a final fall back. A backup to the backup if you will.

Up until I did the rack swap at the site I WAS recording everything on two of the three repeaters. I will be again once I get things completely set back up. Why is it an issue?

So what happened with the Dayton Hamfest Linked repeater??? I saw it pop up and was gonna setup for it but them it disappeared and never returned. Was hoping to use it Friday and Saturday. I have a GR1225 on UHF with the internal duplexer, but I haven't looked at the programming to see if I can set it up as a base station so it will work with a CM108 interface correctly. I have a BUNCH of those interfaces that were bought for ham radio packet interfaces. Got like 50 of them in a bulk purchase. They need some heavy modification to be used, but it's the same modification needed to connect them to a single radio for use as a packet node. I may just set that up in the GR repeater and set it on a pair for a mobile node on a mag mount. It's not like it would need much more to cover the hamfest grounds. And could be used for other events to just stand up a temp repeater. Run the link through the data plan on the phone or something. Thoughts on this? And a specific question. Once it's established as a node, how often does the system need to see it before the ID gets reassigned or removed from the system and can something like that be marked as being for that purpose so it could have a perm ID but not be on all the time. If I get this together, I wouldn't have a problem sharing it either. If someone needed it and would cover the shipping it could be loaned out to folks I know on here.

It was a culmination of several 'complaints' I have had over time from him and others. And was at the end of a rather rough day to boot. I over reacted. Pure and simple. And I have put everything back on the air, and not loaded it up to be sold at the Hamfest this weekend. I do have a BUNCH of stuff to go over there... but that ain't part of it. Which reminds me I DO need to pull a couple other repeaters that are VHF to drag over there and turn into cash..... There are no available VHF ham pairs in my area, so I am gonna dump the VHF repeaters I have since I can't use them.

Not exactly.... It wasn't that he was complaining, it was that he REALLY got indignant when I blew it off and DIDN'T at first act like it was some huge deal and react accordingly. And It's my understanding that the group or whatever he is with was about to put up a repeater. Went and had a discussion with the property owner, and had everything sealed up. Then somewhere in the discussion the property owner dropped an F-bomb and they immediately decided they were NOT going to do anything there because he used a bad word. Now I am getting that third hand. But this dude was on a tear about the guy up north being drunk on the repeater and really felt I needed to do something about it. And since at first I wasn't, he seemed to get irritated with me because it came out of my repeater. He understood that it was a linked system and the guy getting wild was three states away. He didn't care.... I needed to react. So I did.... Scorched Earth. Which was WAY over reacting. But I was mad. I am ok with someone disagreeing with me. I am ok with him being offended by cussing drunks.... What I was actually mad at we HE decided I was wrong for not being really mad and offended that some guy in Wisconsin was drunk on a linked repeater system I have a node on. And when I told him I heard part of it, earlier in the evening, he was really indignant. I am good with someone having a different belief structure than I do. What I am NOT ok with is when they try to force their belief structure on me. Which is basically what happened here. I SHOULD have ask him if he got the guys call sign and then told him to contact the FCC about THAT guy. But I sometimes over react a bit. And pulled the plug out of pure irritation over his nonsense. On a side note. The repeaters are BOTH back on the air. Now, if I hear him on my repeaters again, I may well tell him he's not welcome to use them any more.... But I may not even bother with that. And regardless of how technically reliable a system is. If it's not YOUR system you shouldn't 100% rely on it. Because someone can decide to pull the plug.

Yeah, really... And I ended up moving from 625 to 600 because of it. I suppose I should have added that in there somewhere. He was there first but was so inactive, I had no idea. Easy enough to change frequencies. Bit of programming and a retune of the combiner port.

Now, what LScott and a couple others were talking about. RAC or repeater access code, which is a Motorola thing that sounds like MDC but isn't will control the access of a repeater if enabled. First thing you need to know about it, it's only a Motorola thing. So if you go down that road, only Motorola radios, WITH RAC ability will be able to access your repeater. I suppose you COULD setup a single channel LTR trunking system and use that to control access. But again, You are limiting access to a few radio types. Standard conventional radios will not run on LTR. So you would need to be very specific in the radios you choose to buy. My take is different. If I am putting up a GMRS repeater, it's gonna be open. I would rather pull the plug on it than need to go through dealing with all the crap of trying to put split PL's or RAC or any of that crap on it. If I need to talk on the radio to someone else and I need it to be that tightly controlled, I will get a commercial repeater pair and load up some encryption in my radios and disappear. Or just call them on the phone. It's just simpler. If you are so worried about unauthorized people getting on your GMRS repeater, turn the stupid thing off and find another way to communicate.

Oh,,, geeze. Long day. So first off. I couldn't give a rip about the guy in Wisconsin getting blasted and then talking on the repeater,,, even if it was MY local repeater. I am guessing he ruffled a few feathers. I didn't hear him on today before I pulled the plug, and my guess is that he got up this morning and remembered what he did and out of pure embarrassment stayed off the air. I believe there were a few comments made about him being blitzed as the night wore on. But again, don't care.... not my problem. Others may feel differently, but that's my stance. So what spun me into a rant filled tizzy. I had a user of all 3 of the repeaters at the site contact me on one of the OTHER repeaters, not the 600 that's linked. And he started in about the way the guy was drunk and using vulgarity (his words) on the repeater. I replied that I had heard part of it and was aware. I explained that it was a linked system and that I had little control over someone in the middle of the night, 3 states away acting the fool on the linked repeater system. This for some reason didn't seem to be the response he was expecting. Reading between the lines of what he was saying, he expected me to be equally offended and that it was totally unacceptable that someone acted that way and something needed to be done. But I wasn't doing it and that was unacceptable in his mind. So I reacted. I keyed the radio up, told him he was right, and further more, since he was obviously offended by the FREE REPEATERS that I provide to the community, and that I would just pull the plug and he would no longer be offended. Or if he was he wouldn't have me to complain to about it. Yes, to put it plainly, I was pissed that I was getting this passive aggressive holier than thou crap for someone I provide free GMRS repeater access to. So I reacted in the most polite and politically correct manner I could muster. I pulled the plug on two of the three repeaters. Ultimately, here's the real truth. People say and do things that are not acceptable at times. God knows I have, more than a bunch of times. Now I haven't done it on a repeater, I refrain from that out of respect for others. But I have more than a bunch of times went into a cuss word filled rant when something broke, didn't work as planned, got away from me and fell, fell on me, fell near me and was expensive, and a whole list of other reasons. That's the way SOME people are... and I accept that. Smack your thumb hard enough that the skin tears on the bottom side, not the side you hit, and try to refrain from letting the colorful adjectives come spewing forth. If you can do that, you are a better man than I. But people are people. If you choose to NOT partake of the booze ( i personally don't) then cool. If you choose to have a couple, that's fine. And there are instances that a few turns into a few more and you might start acting dumb. Again, human nature, and I ain't gonna judge. Ol boy decided I personally needed to be offended by the acts of another. And HE wanted to push HIS belief structure on ME. THAT ain't gonna happen.

So I ran, by accident, a repeater without a PL for a short time. The problem with that is when others have a machine on that frequency, even though they are running PL, they will bring up their machine and your machine since having NO PL will allow your repeater to be accessed with ANY PL because it's not monitoring for a specific one. This of course can generate hate and discontent when your repeater has a wide coverage footprint and it covers that guys footprint. He can't use his repeater because you are covering him up or at least are generating some amount of frequency noise and interference with his signal. So are you LEGALLY required to run a PL? It depends and not because there is a specific rule about running PL but instead the rules governing harmful interference with other users equipment. That right there, they're rules for. You can't interfere with other users on purpose. Not running a PL on a repeater when you KNOW there is another repeater on the frequency is purposeful, since you know how to minimize the interference.

I just finished a conversation on one of my repeaters about the antics of an operator on the system last night. Like I personally have any control over it. But then I realized I do have control of it. By yanking the cord out of the wall feeding power to the repeaters. At this point Johnstown675 and Johnstown600 (the linked repeater to midwest) are off. And may well be for good. So here's what NOT to do. When you are a GMRS user, and you are using someone else's repeater FOR FREE because they make a serious effort to provide and maintain equipment for you to use. Don't complain to them that someone 3 states away on a linked system was acting the fool, cussing and drunk on the repeater system. It's a REALLY good way to make them mad. For them to decide it's NOT worth the trouble to keep the equipment on the air and then decide to just pull the plug. For those of you in this area that were using the link and the 675. The jury is still out on what I am gonna do going forward. You have ONE person to thank for it being gone. And that's for you to figure out. But I ain't listening to people complain to me about the actions of another on a linked system. And if you happen to be the guy that complained.... CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!! You got the repeaters shut down. SO there will be no more bad words on the repeater, since there will be no repeater. RANT OFF>...

Hi George. Yes, it's a modified version of All-Star specifically for GMRS. The version of the software is a bit behind the current version of All-Star but it works well. Since you mentioned being familiar with All-Star you shouldn't have too many problems with setting it up, but I will tell you it's NOT exactly the same, and you do need to follow the directions pretty close. The system admin has posted copies of the image used on a Pi for getting it running. You will need to fill out a request for access elsewhere on this site to get that ball rolling. He will provide you with a node number and password to get on the system. Most of the nodes on this system are connected via the RTCM but I can tell you if you hold your mouth right and setup to correct voltage divider for the input of the interface, a CM108 can be made to work. But it certainly takes a bit of effort to get it done and the audio quality of a 1 dollar USB sound card doesn't stack up to the RTCM. My personal setup is an MTR2000 repeater (Johnstown600) with a CM108 interface and a Pi. I am considering switching the Pi out for a VM running on a server for handling the software. But I haven't pulled the trigger on that project yet. Good luck and if you run into problems get on here and ask. Those who are into this will no doubt be happy to assist.

Exactly. And all I was getting at was if you are speaking spanish because you want to then your legal. If you are doing it to obscure the message content then technically it's a problem. But there again, you do it all the time. So the only one that would know what the motivation was for speaking another language is you. And that gets into the whole 'no duty to self incriminate' so again you are covered. My other point was using MDC isn't encryption if it's not specifically being used to mask meaning. And simply sending a radio ID is certainly NOT masking anything.