WRKC935

Lets see. 1. Motorola Astro Spectra High power 2. Motorola XTL5000 High power 3. Motorola MaraTrac high power (have a New in box model with the siren module in storage) 4. Motorola Mitrek High power (Crystal controlled) 5. Motorola Micor high power (crystal) 6. Motorola MoTrac High power (crystal, tube final) 7. Kenwood 890H 8. Kenwood 830H FORGOT ONE: Syntor X That's just the ones that immediately come to mind. I would do some research and get the correct part numbers for these radios and then head off to Hamvention in May to find one. These are all monoband radios, but most if not all have VHF high power counterparts that would also be available. All these radios are going to be remote mount with a control head separate of the radio body with a cable in between. As mentioned, I have a MaraTrac UHF 100 watt model sitting in storage that has never been out of the box. Should be a 99 channel control head and the module and extension head for the 100 watt siren unit. I also have a couple Astro Spectra's in my collection and actually going to pickup a high power XTL today to install in my personal vehicle. Stay away from the crystal controlled radios. They are also good radios but getting crystals for them would be expensive and they are not programmable, changing or adding frequencies requires new / additional crystals. ANd finding final tubes for MoTrac radios would also be difficult. If you are looking to setup a personal vehicle, I would look at the Astro Spectra's. I ran three in my durango with all the control heads in between the seats in a home build console setup with the radios mounted in the back of the truck. There are several different styles of control heads available for the Astro Spectra family of radios. These would be the W series heads and the System9000 head. So you have options if space is limited. Those also have 20 watt audio outputs so running one in a loud or open top vehicle like a jeep wouldn't be an issue.

Depends on if you are wanting to run multiple repeaters on the dual antenna's or just one. Here's what is required to run dual antenna's. Transmit combiner and receive multicoupler with window filter. You CAN'T effectively put up a repeater with two antenna's and no filtering, unless you are going to put 100 feet of seperation between the transmit and receive antenna's. And of course when you do that, you loose a LOT of transmit distance. Find a good duplexer (pass / notch) and run that. If you are going on broadcast towers, you don't have a choice in this. A notch duplexer will NOT filter the significant RF that is present at a broadcast site. And that RF, even out of band will get in the front end of the receiver and deafen it significantly. So don't bother. And even with a window filter and all that, it's still a problem. Far as not wanting to foot the bill for a repeater. Are you looking for one of us to pony up a repeater and duplexer? Sorry, I don't see that happening. As I said before, if there are a large number of GMRS users in your area, pass the hat to them and see if they are willing to donate to the setup of a GMRS repeater. Come up with something of value to trade for a repeater and duplexer. Now I am NOT the person to have this conversation with. That tower, and that stack of repeaters are all privately owned. That tower represents 200 bucks a month in electric bill, 2100 a year in property taxes and about a grand a year in maintenance. That's just keeping the tower lights on and powering the equipment at the site. This is all being done out of pocket. ANd I am not independently wealthy. I work a 8 to 4:30 job just like many others on here. Gonna toss a couple other pics on here. One is what we got when we got the keys to the building. The second is what's there now (actually an older photo, there is more stuff in the building at this point. And ALL this install, from the electric, setting the racks, installing and cabling the equipment is all done by me.

OK, you work for a two-way shop and can't locate used equipment? Shop refuses to sell it to you? Nothing out there still floating around that was decommed during narrowbanding? No one upgrading to digital formats from analog that you could aquire? This isn't a cheap hobby. And we are all in different positions in life and finance. If you have a number of people running simplex GMRS and a repeater would help them out, pass the hat in your area. Find some broke stuff and repair it and get it on the air. But in all honesty, if you are having those sorts of issues, load up the U-haul and come to Columbus Ohio, I am pretty sure if you have the experience you said you do, I bet I know a place that will hire you. https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=radio+technician&l=Columbus%2C+Ohio&vjk=906f8ef3f7b7b97e&advn=9428139108340606 But we don't have much need for GMRS repeaters here. I sort of have that covered in this area.

No. I know this seems to be a trend lately. I was just sticking my nose in and be difficult.

Well, I don't know about that. I put one up before I even had a license, it was licensed under my buddies GMRS call, so it was legit, even though I put it up. Then I got licensed and added two more to the site, for a total of three repeaters. The three Johnstown repeaters in Ohio are all my gear. Two have my call on them and his call is still on the 725 machine.

As mentioned... these are commercial radios. But if you are wanting 110 watts the model numbers you what are the 790H and 890H. These are single band radios that through special firmware can be setup in a dual brick configuration with a single control head. Not a 'dual band' unit in a single brick / chassis. Motorola did the same thing with the Astro Spectra and XTL platform radios. You could get a VHF and UHF brick, a special cable and a HHCH (hand held control head) and once you had all the firmware worked out you could run a single HHCH on dual radios. This was a favorite of the three letter federal agencies. I personally started down that path with a couple Astro Spectra's but the HHCH that was required was expensive at the time and I was driving a big SUV that had space for individual Series 9000 heads that I really preferred. To do it with the XTL radios you have to locate one of those old expensive heads for the newer radio to make it work and I didn't feel the need to bother. I have a set of the low power Kenwood's that are paired. It takes 3 IC's that are still available on the 3rd party market to get it running of you so desire. But in truth, unless you have a REALLY small vehicle I would run two complete radios and call it a day. Unless of course you have 5 grand burning a hole in your pocket and can swing an APX 8500. The biggest issue with any of these setups outside the 8500 is you have to build blank zones in the locations for the other radios active zones. Meaning that you can't SCAN band to band. You can't have multiple bands in the same zone at all. THe 8500 allows this, and a bunch of other stuff that's uber cool like FPP (front panel programming) but it's a hard pill to swallow dropping 5 large on a hobby radio. Even one that will tell you what channel it's on. Yes, it will talk to you if you program it to do that.

OK, great. Have you found sites to put the repeaters? What equipment have you secured for this project? Repeaters, antenna's, duplexers, feedline? Have you discussed pricing for tower access or do you have arrangements for access and negotiated agreements? What rental costs are involved. Will the repeaters be linked to each other or stand alone? Will either of them be linked to the mygmrs system? There is a thread on here titled ' I just got my license and now I want a repeater' or something to that effect. You should go read it, I believe it will be informative.

SWR meter will tell you if you have one. If the SWR is high and it wasn't when you did the install it's probably bad

What is the possibility that something could be setup to extract via a CSV file or spreadsheet the information for repeater approvals by the repeater owners. Obviously this would only be accessible for the owners of the repeaters. But if an owner had multiple repeaters it might be good to be able to download ALL entries for all of their repeaters and have a value for the repeater the access was granted to, or for all repeaters to be displayed and a tick or some value be generated in the field for each repeater that approval had been granted for. Just wondering if that would be possible.

I would go right to a Kenwood 790H / 890H dual brick setup with a single head and call it good. These are FM only commercial radios that would of course be limited by programming and would NOT have a VFO. You really didn't mention what you are planning to do with the radios. This would be my option for a vehicle setup. Obviously if you are needing SSB and satellite functionality, this is NOT the way to go. If that is what you are looking for I would find an ICOM 910-H. That will get you 1.2Ghx as well. I think my satellite rig is a Yaesu 891, but don't hold me to that. I am still getting the antenna system built for satellite work so I am not in front of the radio at all yet. I do know it's all band and all mode with satellite functionality (dual tracking VFO's for each band for dopler shift) And BTW,,, not all that sad. Weird and a bit pissed off, but never sad.

As long as you consider air flow across the equipment it should be fine. Obviously don't build a pocket for the radio to slide into that has no air movement. That goes for the radio and the power supply. Far as interference. Again it shouldn't be a problem as long as the antenna is not right there in the room. Put the antenna outside and use quality cable to connect it to the radio and it will be fine. You have to remember that mobile radios typically are mounted in vehicles that see high internal temperatures and suffer from a lack of real air flow. Places like under seats and in trunks are common. You are gonna have it in a conditioned space. But I would watch the placement of the cabinet so you are not near a furnace vent that would be blowing hot air into the cabinet.

Keep checking. But are you offering them anything in return for access. Sometimes even site maintenance (mowing the grass and maintaining the building is enough). Far as can't add anything else to the site. Is it that you can't add antenna's or can't even add equipment in the building? If you have two UHF antenna's on the tower, there are options for adding more repeaters, but you have meet certain requirements to make it work like the antenna's need to NOT be at the same level. I have two antenna's on my tower and have 4 repeaters connected to those two antenna's. One antenna acts as a receive antenna and the other one is for transmit. It gets a bit complicated, and can be rather expensive, but it's certainly possible to do, since I am doing it.

Radio selection for overlanding is different than other applications in my opinion. I would look for a commercial radio that had coverage for both HAM and GMRS in this case to minimize the number of radios required in the vehicle. And I might (personally WOULD) be looking for something like an XTL5000 that supported dual head so I could have a control point in both the drivers area and the living area of the vehicle. This would minimize the need to move to the cab to get access to the radio when needed. The other reason for a commercial radio over a modded ham radio or other option is you have better programming options (creating ZONES for specific areas) instead of needing to dial through a large number of channels to get to the desired channel. Commercial radios can have fairly complicated zone / channel layouts where the ham stuff, while it may support the same 512 or 1024 channels, will only allow one 'zone' with all 512 channels in numeric order. Other options with some commercial gear is the ability to control a PS grade siren / PA system. While the siren may not be very useful, the PA, radio over PA, and air horn functions can be valuable for overlanding operations in groups. The other thing some commercial setups have is the ability to control other equipment through I/O pins that can be programmed to radio buttons for controlling lights and other things via relays. Again, eliminating other things in the vehicle cab. Think about the amount of stuff that is controlled in a police car or fire truck and then consider that level of control in your overland vehicle. Yeah, it's gonna cost more than the CCR radio you were considering, but it can also save on space and offers additional functionality that a standard radio can't.

First question is do you understand what function the ground plane has regarding antenna placement? Then you need to figure out what you want to accomplish. Which is typically to talk 360 degrees if you are referring to a mobile antenna. And yes, there are antenna's that REQUIRE no ground plane that are mobile antenna's but they are typically low or no gain designs that generate a 'ground plane' by their design. These are also referred to as di-pole antenna's where there are two radiators that are in line vertically and the lower element is 180 degrees out of phase of the upper element creating a radiation pattern without a conductive plane below the upper element. These are for specific applications however and are not the norm. Now there is something else that needs to be considered with a mobile antenna and how it's used. That being it's designed frequency range. A ham antenna will almost NEVER work well on GMRS. Not only will the SWR be high but if it's a gain antenna, where there are multiple elements in phase creating gain due to pattern manipulation, the antenna being operated outside of the designed frequency range will result in poor performance of the antenna. But specific to a ground plane and mobile operations. You want the ground plane to be equal in all directions if possible and the minimum distance from the point of mounting to be at least the distance of the first radiating element of the antenna. If the antenna is 1/4 wave, then the ground plane needs to be 1/2 in diameter. If it's a 5/8 then the ground plane needs to be 5/8 radius (radius is 1/2 the diameter). If that is not achieved then the resulting antenna pattern is NOT going to be equal in all directions around the vehicle.

Open or not? That is the question. Well no, not really. But I guess I need to determine what your definition of closed is. Are you referring to it being closed as requiring permission for access, or are you referring to closed as no one outside your specific group as having access going forward. And I will warn you that even having an OPEN repeater on this forum with POSTED PL's but the ability to request access will fill your email box with permission requests. I get them all the time. No one has ever been denied, but I still get the requests. So will you. If you are going to make the access semi-private, not post the PL / DPL information publicly, like I have, and wait for requests, you will get MORE requests. But at least the repeater is publicaly posted for frequency and area of coverage. This will cut down on the possibility of someone else parking a repeater on your frequency with a different PL. Not posting it publicly at all can get a repeater parked on your frequency if no one else knows about it. Or posting it as being PRIVATE, or fee based membership. Then you will get to deal with assholes like me that absolutely abhor the idea of taking a shared resource and trying to charge money for it. My way of dealing with it was building a repeater that completely covered the other guys coverage area and making it fully open. Of course he did have a for profit business of selling access to his GMRS repeaters, so I really had ZERO heartburn doing so. He was the only one that suffered form that since his users could access my repeater for free, so they didn't need to pay him any longer. But those are the breaks. I work very hard in this area to work with anyone trying to setup repeaters for any type of use outside of that. I have run coverage maps for all the repeaters in my area, referenced this site and others trying to locate all the operational repeaters around with their PL / DPL information so when someone is talking about putting up a repeater I can assist with something resembling frequency / PL coordination so interference is kept to a minimum and everyone is happy. I have programmed repeaters and tuned duplexers for others to get them on the air. And I have provided equipment to people to get a system on the air if they had a location to get something up and running. I just refuse to support it as a business, and will attempt to scuttle ANY attempt to turn GMRS access into a business for profit. Now understand that this stuff is EXPENSIVE. SIte access, electricity, equipment and maintenance all costs money. Requesting donations, having raffles, and other fund raising operations are well within the scope of getting the bills paid for keeping gear on the air. But GMRS is not there to enrich you financially. So in truth, leaving it open for use is the best option. Here's why in my opinion. First is management of access. There frankly is none. For those people that get on there and act dumb, the other operators will deal with them, typically by just ignoring the stupidity. And that is the best way for dealing with LID operators. They get bored and go elsewhere that they can get a rise out of people. You will have more users if there are fewer restrictions for access. But there is a requirement of good equipment for that as well. My linked repeater on the MidWest system gets over 1000 PTT's a day and 4 to 6 hours of talk time on a normal day and twice that on the days there is a net. You can't get a couple mobiles in a box to stand up to that usage level for long. But it's always better to have good equipment from the start and not need to worry about it. The other thing with more users and activity is you can see the fruits of your efforts. And there are people there if you want to just chat with someone.

Yes, Quantars will work like that. MTR2000 software however doesn't, or at least I never had any luck with it. MTR2000 software, Astrospectra /XTS 3000's needed something older as well. You get into the old 3 digit model number Kenwoods and the Maratrac / Maxtrac / Spectra Motorola's and you are DOS only. But the software will run on a fast machine. The stuff that's older than that generation like the Syntor's needed a 386 / 486 at MAX to program them. I actually have an old 286 for the oldest stuff. Not even sure if it works any more. Those old MFM and ESDI drives could have the heads stick to the platters of the drives if they sat too long. I haven't done any work on that old equipment in 10 or more years. But I maintain the ability to or at least try to maintain it. And I have seen older Motorola radios get bricked by people trying to use Windows XP and a DOS window to program them. For some old mobile or HT, so what, you're out 30 bucks for another radio. Got brick an MTR or older Kenwood repeater and things get a bit more serious and costly.

I wonder if they are a hold over from back in the day when there were business licenses and non-family members could operate under the group license. If that is the case, they wouldn't be required to ID as long as the repeater was IDing for them. It would all be under one license. As far as requiring a test, fee's or any of that. It depends on how it's structured. If you are 'paying' to be a member of the group and one of the perks of being a member is repeater access, then it's probably OK. But I will not go any deeper than that. To the testing. You are joining a group. The group can have any sort of requirement for membership they want to have. They can also limit the conversation topics to whatever they want on the groups repeater. So that's a decision that you are gonna need to make for you.

I fully agree with what you are saying, but with Part95 licenses, but there is no requirement to list the repeater location on the license like there is with the Part90 licenses. I don't know how the FCC would look at a vehicle mounted temporary repeater specifically with GMRS under the rules. Might be an interesting thing to inquire about to the FCC and see how they respond.

Best investment you can make if you are going to get into working on radios seriously. Another piece of advice. Have someone reload the machine with DOS 6.2 then reload Windows XP for DUAL BOOT. Some of the older radios never had a Windows version of programming software and you will have to use DOS to run the programming application.

Just noticed, this will be my 400th post. I guess it's worth noting. That being said, portable / vehicular repeaters can indeed be useful in certain applications but need to be thought through during the design phase to get them right. First question is what are you going to be using for subscribers on the repeater? If it's only going to be portables (hand held radios) then there is zero need for a 50 watt repeater. The portables will never be able to take back across the full coverage of the 50 watt repeater. And the repeater is going to have an elevated antenna that further extends it's range beyond the range of portables or mobiles. If you will be talking to a combination of mobiles and portables, then you need to consider that and POSSIBLY increase the repeater power output but again, the antenna is 20 or so feet in the air, range will be better on the repeater. Antenna mounting for a portable / vehicular repeater. Best option here is some sort of 2 inch hitch mount that hinges up and into place. This allows one person to deploy the repeater. Have a mast that nests together or uses the 4 foot mast pipes that are military surplus and prevalent for amateur radio use. A quick trip to walmart will get you some heavy velcro straps to fasten the cable to the mast, and make a clean setup. 12 volt POWER Another reason to NOT have a 50 watt repeater is the power that it will consume.A 10 watt repeater will consume 40 watts LESS power than a 50 watt repeater. And power source is important. Simply plugging the thing into a cigarette lighter port will no doubt leave you with a dead battery at the end of your weekend of fun. Building some sort of isolated battery plant for the vehicle is important here. But a couple storage batteries that are in parallel powering the repeater is a much better option than running your start battery dead 2 hours before you pack up in the middle of the woods and everyone else has left the area. The idea of 2 portable radios should not even be a consideration. At minimum you will need to mobile radios and a 'mobile' duplexer to do it right. And there is a requirement for the repeater to ID. Now there is no specific WAY it needs to Identify, just that it does it. This can be YOU the owner or family using YOUR call sign to ID on the repeater while it's being used. Yes, there are little CW IID boxes that can be used, but that might be something for down the road once you see if it's going to fill your need prior to spending the money for it.

Wow, lots of talk over a topic that's WELL covered. You can use 10 codes on GMRS if they are the standard 'published' list of 10 codes. Making up your own does skate into the questionable side of things however. Bigger issue is WHERE are you going to be using them? If you are either talking simplex or talking on a repeater YOU own, then again, nothing wrong with that. If you are on a repeater that is owned by someone else, they have the right to ask you to NOT use 10 codes or for that matter they can control topics of discussion in general or ask you to NOT use their repeater at all. And once told to not use the repeater, you have to comply with that. There seems to be too many interpretations of the rules for GMRS. But this is my version.

Tough to say. If you are just getting into the World of GMRS and not sure about it, I would stick to the preprogrammed Chinese stuff from Woxun and Anytone. If you are a ham operator and a GMRS user, you might look at the more programmable stuff that will operate on both services. Once you get into the commercial radios from Kenwood, Icom, Motorola and others, you need to track down programming software, programming cables and sometimes slower computers to get the radios setup. The other thing you need to do is get familiar with the model numbers for some radios beyond the radio family number. Motorola is the worst about this as they made CDM radios in all different bands and they were all CDM 750/1250/1500, but they could be low band, VHF, 220 or UHF. Buying the wrong radio sort of sucks. Kenwood's model numbers would at least tell you what band the radio was for. And then there were frequency splits of bands in the Motorola stuff as well. An S split was 450-512 and would do GMRS but not ham. A R split would do 403 to 470 and would do both, but a T split was 470 -590 and wouldn't work for either. Batlabs.com is a good source for model number breakdown if you are looking that direction. Another Motorola radio that seems to be well accepted is the XPR line from Motorola. Again actual model numbers are key here to getting the right radio for GMRS / HAM use. I personally favor the Motorola stuff, but I work for a Motorola dealer and repair shop so that's what I know. I have radios from many different manufactures but I use the Motorola stuff almost exclusively. As mentioned, there are some radios out there that are down right expensive. They have a number of functions that have zero application to GMRS or HAM operations. They are very good radios but have a 4 digit price tag to go along with the prestige of ownership. Yea, I have a couple of those too. But for a guy just starting out, getting an APX radio is really NOT the think to be doing. But again, I would start with something inexpensive but don't have high expectations for the actual radio. The cheap stuff works. How well it works can be debated but it WILL properly function and allow you to get on the air and talk. The manufacturing quality of that stuff isn't the highest available, but you are not paying 500 bucks for it either. The bottom of the barrel portable radios are under 50 bucks (Baofeng) but will allow you to get on and talk. I would advise a mobile / base first however not knowing where you are. Portable radios are great if you are close to a repeater and can get in it well. But lack the power to talk much distance. And a base station can be a simple mobile radio connected to a 12 volt power supply sitting on a desk with an outdoor antenna that will significantly increase your range.

Yep, went back and reviewed his other posts. 6 to 8 lines max and then all of a sudden this stuff. Personally I think we need to put a stop to this nonsense right now. If you want to get on here and write a novel about a topic, then YOU need to be writing it, not ChatGPT. Because screen scraping someone or someTHING else's work and calling it your own is still plagiarism and BS. Is this what the world is coming to that people refuse to have an actual thought or opinion and instead ask some AI thing on the Internet to form an opinion for them? We just gonna forgo free thinking and jump on the InterWeb bandwagon of BS and allow others thoughts to be combined by some computer system and just go with that? Ok, how about we just forgo voice communications of any kind, run some voice recognition program on our computers and and then connect that to our radios and let the computers talk on the radio and not bother to actually communicate with each other any more. Personally I think this stuff is getting out of hand. And we are only beginning to scratch the surface of the coming dumb. The WORST is yet to come.

dead horse beater

Gonna stick something ELSE in here that I don't think has been covered. If you are on a LINKED repeater system, even if you are a repeater owner on the system, you have to identify. Reason is that your transmissions are not only coming out of your repeater, but other owners (call signs) repeaters as well. That being said, I don't know of any owners on the linked system that don't identify. So this isn't a ding on anyone I have ever heard or talked to. But it's worth mentioning for others. I see this being debated here and in several other threads. And I frankly don't understand why it's a big deal to identify. And thing for a second WHO it is that consistently DOESN'T identify. The clowns that are causing hate and discontent with their beeps and burps and other crap being jerks. So you are wanting to fall into that group and act that way? Not sure what your motivations is for that. Repeater ID requirements. What the regulations say has been covered, several times. What you choose to do on YOUR repeater is up to you if it's stand alone. If it's linked, it has to ID every 15 minutes. And you are better off to set the ID for 10 minutes so that if it's held off by traffic, it will still go out in time to be compliant.