WRKC935

Spam from here? I am yet to see that with any of the repeaters I have listed here. But I would be curious to know how much the owner monitors his repeater if he's concerned with 'spam' from the GMRS web site. I am betting that this is another case of a repeater that got installed and forgotten by it's owner.

Well, I don't know that anyone here understands what this is or what a Audio Aggregator 25747 is. A bit of a description of what you have going on here and what you are trying to accomplish might help. Or you can keep us guessing.

Yeah, mine is listed as open but I get requests all the time too. So you had an argument with the owner of the repeater that you were going to have FREE access to. That seems like perfectly reasonable thing to do... Do you remember (probably not) Nancy Reagan's catch phrase? You might look into that and take her advice. Then, with you hat in your hand, apologize to the guy and see if you can get back into his good graces and get permission, hoping he's not a scorched earth type of guy like I am. Because personally, if you are dumb enough to argue with me prior to getting permission of at any point after that, it would be a cold day in hell before I let you on my gear. But that's how I roll. But if it's the guy on here I am thinking it is. He's actually every bit the A-hole I am and wouldn't pee in your face at this point if you beard was on fire. So you might be screwed.

That is some sort of ERROR beep. Could be low voltage feeding into unit, could be high SWR, could just be programmed wrong. I would check the manual, specifically the error codes and see if that sheds light on it.

To the OP, don't think this is specifically an attack on you. This is a more general statement because this question gets ask here and on numerous Ham Radio forums all the time. I don't understand how people get the idea that they are going to replace hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure (CELL and PSTN) communications systems with a 35 dollar license and a 40 dollar handheld radio. Is there some web site someplace telling people this is even possible? Has the lack of technical understanding of communications reached a point that this question can even be ask honestly? The only way that you are going to talk to someone in California consistently with a UHF radio is get in your car and drive there. Sit outside their house and have the conversation simplex (radio to radio). Other than that, your out of luck. As others have mentioned, Ham radio using HF (frequencies below 30 Mhz) makes it possible, but BOTH of you have to be licensed to do that. You are both going to need a reasonable sized antenna to do it, and it's not going to work 24/7 due to propagation of the radio signal. And frankly it's not going to be cheap. It's not going to be millions of dollars, but it's at least going to be thousands if not tens of thousands. Because the more you spend, the more consistently you will be able to get a signal across that divide. And if you are talking grid down SHTF situations, then you are looking at solar and wind power at BOTH ends because even generators require electricity to continure to operate. Now I realize that a generator MAKES power. But it really doesn't MAKE anything. It converts the energy in fuel to electrical energy. How do you get the fuel in a grid down? Normally you would just go to the gas station and get a few gallons of gas. In a grid down SHTF world, the gas stations don't have electricity, so you ain't getting fuel. And in those scenario's some fool with guns is standing there at the gas station demanding food, gold, ammo or something for that fuel if they can get it out of the tanks. Here's a solid truth for guys that are trying to figure out prepping and dealing with a SHTF situation watching YouTube videos. No one that actually knows how to deal with these situations are going to tell you their secrets. Because having stuff is one thing. Knowing how to get stuff, and live in a manner close to a normal existence is something else and part of that is NOT telling other how to do it. There will be a competition for getting materials, fuel, food and the like when this hits. We saw it during Katrina when they stripped the stores clean, down to taking the racks and display shelves. And all that stuff is just there... low hanging fruit. People will become violent to attain stuff, because they are too stupid to be prepared, too stupid to think about getting stuff any other way. And the one's that know how to harvest the stuff that's not sitting there to just be taken with violence are going to get the stuff they need to survive and exist after the shelves are picked clean. The fewer people that know how to do that, the more stuff will be available for them to get. And that's only logical.

Yes, but their technology is far better than most of the rest of us have to track signals.

Couple things to know about radios in general. First is power output. A radio that has V power output is going to perform the same as any other radio that has that same power output. This is assuming that both radios are transmitting a signal that is legal, where the harmonics are below the required level. Not gonna go into the weeds on that, but you can look it up. Then you get to features, menu items and the like. The multi thousand dollar radios typically have LESS features (higher end commercial radios) than a 40 dollar Baofeng or Btech. They are NOT designed or built for radio hobbyists, they are designed for public safety communications where the user just needs to talk and listen. Menu items all revolve around that and extra's are not there to overly complicate the radio. THe other modes like P25 have no bearing on GMRS because it's not legal to use P25, DMR or those other modes on GMRS. The service is limited to basic wideband FM analog communication. So we get to the last part, the receiver. And this is the part where the better radios will shine over the inexpensive ones. Things like adjacent channel rejection and front end filtering in the more expensive radios make them better. Mind you, if you are operating in a suburban or rural area that doesn't have a ton of RF noise and trash in the air, you may never see the difference. But we have taken a Baofeng and a Motorola HT1000 up 200 feet on the tower. The HT1000 worked as it should. The Baofeng would receive all manner of noise and garbage and was almost unusable. Taking both into a busy downtown area of a major city would show similar results.

I guess 'draw' isn't a good description, other than an inductor looks like an open (not ground) the instant power is applied. The bigger issue is if it takes a hit right at the antenna, you get hit by the lightning, and the inductive kick. So you get blasted twice. Mind you that it seems the ham mentality is if a single service loop is good, then rolling 15 feet of cable up is better. And if a pre-made cable is used, there is just no way it can be cut to length. So it gets coiled somewhere. I have seen more than once where someone bought a 100 foot pre-made cable to go 30 feet and teh other 70 feet is in a coil someplace. Sometimes its at the base of the tower, sometimes at the entry to the building, and ever behind the operator desk. As a commercial radio guy, this drives me nuts.

I will say this about any sort of coil of cable right under the antenna or anywhere else. It is going to be an inductor to lightning. If you properly ground the antenna to the mast or with a ground wire for non-conductive masts, then it probably doesn't matter. If not, then it may draw lightning more so than an antenna that has no inductor directly below it. I believe the reasoning for it was it's a 'service loop' if your connector goes bad or you change antenna's. Gortex mentioned they don't do this on commercial installs. And that's due to there typically being two cables in the run. The larger vertical run of cable up the tower and then a smaller, more flexible jumper from the top of that run out to the antenna. At least that's what we do if the feed line up the tower is 7/8 or larger. Hams probably started doing it because of the experimentation involved with ham radio and cutting a cable to length limits what can be put up in place of the old antenna, and jumpers and the like cost money they might not be willing to spend. I have seen 7/8 out to antenna's, but they are antenna's designed with a pigtail cable to feed them. It doesn't work well for antenna's with fixed connectors in the base of the antenna, and depending on the cable size and antenna design, the connector might even be to large to enable the connector to be threaded up to the antenna, like the Station Master antenna and a run of 1 1/4 or larger. THe connector for that antenna is recessed into the bottom of that antenna and a 1 1/4 connector would not directly connect to that recessed connector. There is just no room to get a wrench in there and tighten it.

Well, it has sort of happened. At least in the commercial radio field. On Jan 1 2013 the FCC implemented a requirement for all commercial radios to be 'narrow band' and support 12.5Khz channel width's. Many radios that were still in use that didn't support the new mandate had to be replaced by that date. Failure to do it had the possibility of significant fines from the FCC. Now I never heard of anyone getting fined, but I do remember replacing a ton of radios and repeaters that customers were actively using in the year or so prior to that date. So it wasn't really a type acceptance reversal, but it did make illegal to use a vast number of radios.

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

And that is when you put your arms out and tell the responding officers to arrest you for having an assault rifle. Let them bring a hi-lift jack into the court room as evidence and then DEMAND they be arrested for being that stupid. Sue the dumb bitch for calling the cops to begin with and made damn sure you have the jack she thought was a weapon in the court room when you sue her. This is why I live where I live. We don't have this sort of bullshit here and I refuse to move to other places where they do. Police around here would tell her to shut the F up and if she refused to do so, SHE would be arrested, not the owner of a hi-lift jack. I am telling you right now. These people are being trained to spool people up. The people responsible for allowing people to continue to be this damned stupid are looking for a violent uprising from the people with common sense because they are the biggest threat to them taking over and running things. All this crap that we are seeing on a day to day basis where people get more and more off the reservation isn't happening by chance. And until people figure this out, find the root of the movement and call them out with proof it's happening, it's going to continue until they figure out the right buttons to push and all hell breaks loose. Problem is that when that happens it will be too late. The people with common sense and a sense of basic morality will be labeled as dangerous and enemies of the state. And if there is a gun even present, used or not, it will be the reason to ban all firearms and start the collection of them.

If it passes without the HAM / GMRS exemption, the FCC / federal government will end up involved and force the law to be amended to have an exemption. The federal government issues the license and therefore the access and right to communicate on specific frequencies or radio services. These laws and regulations attempt to over rule those rights, and the FCC / federal government doesn't typically tolerate that. Of course the only tool that the FCC has to deal with it is fines. But about the time they hit the Commonwealth of PA with a ten million dollar fine, they will get the picture. Personally I feel that the federal government needs to start going after the specific legislators that write and sign these bills that attempt to usurp the federal regulations that exist with fines and jail time. Many years ago, there was a decision made about the ownership of a certain commodity of the time. Some states allowed the ownership of that commodity while others did not. It was decided that the ownership was illegal across all of the United States and a number of individual states attempted to leave the country, and we ended up with the bloodiest war in this nations history. I bring this up because the 13th amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America abolished the ownership of people. And the Civil War while about slavery in a way, was really a fight about states rights to create their own laws concerning things that the federal government had ruled on and were the law of the land. And as brought up elsewhere, the Second Amendment grants us rights to gun ownership. Yet there are a number of states that significantly limit that right. While ownership and operation of radio equipment isn't as significant as the right to own guns, or not own people, it's still controlled at a federal level and as such, states shouldn't be creating regulations or laws that limit the ownership or use of it.

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.