Flameout

I have 50' of Wireman CQ1000 running to the Comet 712EFC and for the DB404, I have 25' of Andrew Heliax Ldf4-50a coupled with about 12' of Andrew Heliax fsj4-50b I'm still experimenting to see what works best, but with the limited gmrs activity in my area, it's tough to get feedback.

I have both a Comet 712 EFC and a Commscope DB404 and my repeater is a Motorola GR500 (I also have a few GR1225's) I don't understand why, but the Comet is performing better but either of those would be a good choice. Both so far have held up to some good winds. Some gusts over 50mph

Have you looked into the older Motorola GR500/GR1225 repeaters? Can usually be found for a few hundred dollars with duplexer so all you need is a GOOD antenna and elevation. I actually have a few of them, with one set up in my area. It works good, but gmrs is kind of dead here. I also have a Retevis RT97 that I tried out for a week or so. I tried selling a complete, tuned (.650) lower power GR1225 locally but no one was even interested

I have no idea of the legalities of using a gmrs repeater in a school/business scenario, but something like a Motorola GR1225 centralized in the school, with a good antenna seems like it would do the trick and they can be found for a few hundred dollars. Even the lower power r1225 (1w-11w) would probably work for that small of an area.

My old Kenwood tk880h works great

There is a GMRS DMR repeater in my area, but right now I don't have a digital radio so haven't been able to test it out. I do hear weird, loud noise occasionally on the frequency using my analog radio. I'm guessing it's IDing? https://mygmrs.com/repeater/8051

I agree. I bought a Motorola GR1225 repeater and they obviously were playing soccer with the box. The front panel was in about 10 pieces and of course FedEx denied my claim

It's 40' from the ground. That mast/roof line is about 12' and it's also secured to the fascia right at that point. I would love to get it higher, with a tower, but that's way too expensive right now

I use four 10' sections of that galvanized top rail used in fencing. It was only meant to be temporary, but so far is working good. Yes, there are guy wires

There's a guy in my area that was testing DMR on a GMRS frequency. He supposedly had an experimental license from the FCC. This was a month or so ago and I haven't heard much more about it, so maybe it fizzled out

A good thing about a repeater IDing is that at least you know there is a repeater on that frequency. Let's say you were thinking about putting up a repeater, so you monitor a certain frequency and never hear anyone or any ID, so you think great, the frequency is open! Then you set up your repeater only to learn you're now fighting with someone that already had a repeater set up! I don't know if it is or isn't required, but it's certainly a good idea to have it ID occasionally

I wasn't able to get the r1225 software to run under Windows 7 but runs fine on my Windows XP machine. Of course I may be wrong about Windows 7

Yes, I was telling him that not all repeaters are listed on mygmrs site. I kind of got carried away with the other stuff. Just so he knows that there are many more repeaters than my gmrs shows

OK, good to know. I was just going by what others have posted. The LMR400 is certainly a lot cheaper than hardline

Unfortunately, I don't think very many of the repeaters are listed here on mygmrs. Maybe I'm wrong but I know of a lot more repeaters in my area than the couple listed here. I actually just listed mine last week, hoping to get more people active. I did have 22 requests for access, with 18 of them being within 15 miles and the users went from about 2 to well, 2. Lots of people want access, but no one ever uses the repeaters here in my area I guess you could go through the radio settiings and manually check each pl on the frequency, and if you get lucky, give out your callsign and maybe the repeater owner will get back to you

Not sure, but I dont think LMR400 is especially good for repeater use. Maybe looking into so something like Andrew Heliax LDF4-50a

ok, so I think it's the radio and not the meter , so that kind of sucks. I guess I can go into the settings and lower the output power? I checked it on a couple other radios and the output power was right where it should be. These 2 photos are my Motorola GR500 repeater, on low power and high power, out of the built-in flat pack duplexer

I was thinking that too. I'd love to find a good used Bird at a decent price. When I first bought the FR4000 is was right in that range you mentioned so hopefully it is the meter and not my repeater. If it's the repeater, then it probably isn't long for this world

Oh, I wasn't concerned with power loss from the duplexer, I was just wondering how a radio rated at 50 watt output is putting out 60+ watts

Here is before the duplexer. I'll test the meter on a different radio tomorrow to see if it's actually the meter going bad. The repeater itself is working good though. A Motorola T1504 duplexer and 1/2" hardline to the Commscope DB404 antenna

I'm not sure if I have a bad power meter, my repeater is going bad or what is going on but my FR4000 is initially showing around 60 watts out of the duplexer when first receiving a signal and drops to mid 40's within a few seconds as the conversation continues. It doesn't happen all of the time, sometimes it will be at a normal 41 watts or so after the duplexer. I only have the one meter for now, so can't check using another. I was just wondering if this could be a sign that the repeater is on its last leg and about to die. Oh, the output power of the FR4000 is rated at 50 watts (high pwr)

If you have 3 of them now, can't you take the parts from the bad ones to make one good one?

I had that happen once on a cheap Chinese Fumei duplexer. Not sure what or why it happened. I just ended up buying a used 633-6A-2N on ebay and it's been fine ever since

Not to be a pain, but have you had a chance to look at your settings or your xxx.icf file? I think we must have the last 2 of these radios in existence. Even Icom wasn't able to help me. There has to be a working xxx.icf file out there somewhere, but it is very elusive

Thanks for the replies. I tested the power output with a Bird wattmeter. The repeater for now isn't in use, until I can figure out the CWID problem. Seems that some of these FR4000's will tx a cwid and some don't. I'm not real concerned with increasing the output power. I was just more curious if it was really that easy or if it would harm the radio. I'm still playing around with it. My antenna (DB404) for now is as high as I can possibly get it (about 40'), without getting a tower (and a divorce) and it's being fed with Andrew Heliax ldf4-50a