Steve

That's a great good point about they prob just dont care.... i have my technical ham. i am very much like how you explained yourself, i like the radio system for the utility and usefulness to connected who i want to connect, but to just talk about what i was eating for lunch is ... well, its like facebook, i dont post i just read a few things and see how my friend and family are doing. i post a few family photos during special events so others can see the kids and stuff... again, for the utility of it. I def dont see the point of the "contestor ham" to just see how many contacts they can get, that sounds stupid to me. that might explain why i'm looking to set up a GMRS repeater, i just want something i can connect to at home.... and for the experience of building it. thanks for your feedback

I live in north west NJ and for the past few days, I’ve been hearing these two guys talk on GMRS same two guys I heard weeks ago talking about this new repeater, the signal is really strong…. They are talking in a way where they are careful not to say anything personal or private in any way, everythign is very general. They are going through what sounds like their own repeater that doesn’t ID and one guy keeps saying his call is “WP W203 524 for ID…” which I can’t find in the FCC db, and the other guy mumbles every time his call (as if he doesn’t want anyone to hear it). All I can get is the last few numbers “509” …this repeater sounds great here and its just about full quieting on my HT inside the house…. the towns they are talking about being in while talking through this span 50 miles and are close to up sate NY. I think its ch 3 they are talking on… its really strong. They refer to each other by just the last 3 numbers, like “hey 524 how are you?” and “this is 509” – they are talking about how they are going to moving repeaters around once the weather gets nice. They are talking on motorolas with the 1200 burst... So, I'm building a repeater for home and to cover a few miles around my house with my family and it would be nice to reach out to these guys to just say hi, I let them know I can hear them, and maybe share resources or at the very least, find out where they are, and make sure my gear doesn’t mess with their gear. The other traffic I hear is random people fading in, getting strong and then fading out. Almost all sound like there is a repeater with some kind of tail and roger beep, but no ID. I tried asking if anyone can hear me on simplex and the input frequencey but no one responds. They must be far or using PLs. obviously i dont know the PL of the repeater to try and get in. and i dont have the equiptment to figure that out. Does this sound like normal GMRS usage around here? Are they mostly all hidden / private? The point of all this is I’m trying to get a lay for the land for GMRS repeaters…. And what they sound like, how they are used ,etc. It seems you don’t have to have the GMRS repeater ID, FCC seems unclear about this. Should i just ignore all this and use a different channel? If all channels had traffic like this, then how do you go about making sure you dont interfear with the other guys if you can't contact them? Do you just try your best to stay out of each other's way?

JohnE - this looks awesome! I wish i could find a group of guys willing to build something like this with me near my home in NJ.

i haven't done much with my repeater in a while, money is a litlte tight now and i still need a duplexer and controler. you gave me an idea, that maybe i can build this without the controler and just use the two tied together as a range extender. you say depending on set up, but from what i understand, a GMRS repeater has to ID? I hear people now talking on GMRS without any ID, but its clear its a repeater with a roger beep and tail, once they stop talking, the signal does dead, for days at a time. i have all 8 ch scanning 24/7 while i'm at home, and sometimes i use a voice recorder at night to see who's on... not much, but then out of the blue, some guys testing out a repeater, i can hear prefectly well. there is only 1 GMRS repeater in town that Id's every hour or so, except at night, i found the owner and got permission, which is great, but i still want to build my own for short range with my kids. (the one in town will cover too much area for what i need)

bump. Wondering if this is one of the gray areas of GMRS rules.

I also noticed the stock antenna on the UV-5R is not very good. I tested with my home basestation, and from the edge / fringe and using the stock all i could hear was noise and a burried voice under the noise. I used a nagoya na-701 antenna from the same spot, same radio, and although there was still noise (hiss) i could make out the voice with no problem.

i think what i have now is good, i need to see what kind of use i'm going to get out of all this before i put more money into it. so far, it works around the areas i need it close to home. not sure its worth the slippery slope of trying to get that extra few miles out of it at this point.

I would love to try it out and do a side by side compare to what I have now. I could mount it to my antenna mast and do the same range check. Does it have N connectors? I'd have to look into mounting something like that on the side of my roof where the gable vent is, and have it reach up a few feet over the roofline and then use a short 25 ft run of LMR-600 and put the radio closer. Currently i need the 50 of the cheaper cable becuase i have to run it down my chimney and along the roof, down the side of the house and into my first floor window where my office is. it just makes it. yeah, i have been meaning to read up on the difference between dbi and dbd.

thanks, this gives me more stuff to learn and read up on. that NCG Comet CA-712EFC looks nice.

i'm wondering if I should i be looking to spend more on a better UHF antenna, maybe an antenna tuner to get the most out of it. Maybe something like this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/UHF-Base-Repeater-Antenna-Professional-/141506470434?pt=US_Radio_Comm_Antennas&hash=item20f2716222 also, i will add, my "feedline" is just some 50ft of RG8x straight into the Kenwood tk-880 radio.

a brief update on repeater build. i got my roof antenna set up using the $40 jpole inside a PVC pipe from ebay, its about 10 ft off the top of my roofline. i have been playing with range while connected to a tk-880 and using a UV-R and 888s handheld to test different areas around my neighborhood. here's the antenna i'm using... http://www.ebay.com/itm/UHF-Base-Repeater-Antenna-ham-70-cm-GMRS-FRS-commercial-5dB-gain-/121494313637? the seller says "This antenna does not required a ground plane. It consist of 2 phase 1/2 lambda elements." It seems that because i have a lot of hills, its hard to get a lot of distance. if i drive west towards the woods, its all down hill, and the signal is clear and strong about 1/2 to 3/4 miles, but if i head south about 1 mile to the park, there are a lot of hills, maybe 100 ft of ups and downs all the way there... The baofeng 888s radio can reach the home base station but too noisy to make out the voice. The UV-5R with the after market nagoya 701 is able to get clean audio, but there is a lot of noise. As i get closer to home, the noise level drops down and the voice is still there at the same level, but without all the hiss and noise in the bacground. I found a local private repeater, found the owner, and asked permission, got permission and started to test with his GMRS repeater. I dont know anything about the gear/antenna used yet, but at this point, i know its on either a water tower or a cell tower on a hill top right in town, you can see the cell tower from the park, but not from home where my base is, and def not from the woods to the west. What i'm surprized about is how clean and clear the signal can be when i go through the repeater using the same gear on my side. Both 888s and UV-5r can get a nice clean noise free signal through the repeater from all areas that i've been testing from in town. There is no difference at all that i can hear from the west woods, to home in the vally, to the park, when its through the repeater. So what i am trying to figure out is "what" exactly makes it sound so clear? I'm guessing its 15% antenna, 5% radio gear and 80% location.... where do you put the resources to make it sound so clean and clear? Maybe its more like 70% location, 25% antenna and 5% radio? Do I have that formula right? Maybe if i upgrade my antenna it will help, but only in the vally where I'm at, as going over the hills breaks the line of sight.... so i'm back to "location" being so very important. ... Another thing i was wondering about.... when i'm inside the vally from my home base station to hand held, its clean with more noise as i get further away, but as soon as i go over a hill and break the "line of sight" and start to drive down the other side of the hill, i suddenly get a lot of very loud crackling sounds, even if i am outside my car, standing still. It sounds like someone is shaking the antenna connection causing loud cracklling and scratching sounds they are louder than the voice signal and it makes it hard to make out what the voice is saying. I'm wondering what this is, maybe the signal passing through trees getting noise from the tress moving in the wind, etc. Anyone know?

Hi Randy. I'm looking for the same thing. I'm building a repeater out of two Kenwood Tk-880 radios. I'm at the point of building the cables and putting the antenna up on my roof. How far along are you? here's my build thread: https://forums.mygmrs.com/topic/333-building-a-repeater-out-of-two-kenwood-tk-880/?hl=tk-880 I'm in north jersey. There are two GMRS repeater here in town and the owner gave me permission to use it. It works really well. Its on the local cell tower and it covers the entire town plus the towns around me with a very clean signal. I still want to make my own but i'm thinking about how to make it portable, and solar powered.

>>How about a feature to automatically subscribe you to a thread you've posted on? yes, i'm looking for this feature too.

95.55(b)A base station must not transmit communications to(2)Any base station; so if i have a GMRS antenna on my roof with a "basestation" kenwood tk-880 radio, i can't set up the same thing at my friend's house a mile away and talk with his "base station"? It has to be something else like base station to HT?

I'm wondering the same thing. I found a house at the very top of a hill overlooking the camp ground that we're going to be at this summer, you can see for miles from his back yard. I called him up and he didn't understand what I wanted to do. He told me he's okay with it, but not sure if there will be a plug to plug in outside, so i should bring some solar panels just to be safe. Now i'm wondering if its better to set up two HTs vs two Mobiles just to reduce the standby power. This is turning into a big project of learning the pros and cons of using cheap HTs vs commercial mobile systems, batteries, solar panels, controllers, charge controllers, location, and how much is too much weight to carry when sizing it up with batteries.

Welcome Lew. i'm building a GMRS repeater and learning a bunch of stuff along the way. I plan to let my kids use it to communicate with me back home. There is already a local GMRS repeater in town that works really well. I'm still trying to figure out who actually uses GMRS around me as I have not heard anyone talking on the frequencies in a month or two, the entire time i have been scanning and listening. There seems to be a bunch of GMRS repeaters around, many that are not registered, but i can hear the ID and sometimes when people key up for a "kerchunck" - It seems they are private and for private use. The one in town is owned by a fellow ham who said i could use it. He said "the problem with GMRS around here is that there are repeaters everywhere" - but yet, i hear no traffic. I even set up a voice recorder on VOX and let it record all day. All i hear is a series of IDs on morse code. I guess what i really need to learn is my neighborhood's landscape of GMRS, so i'm keeping in touch wiht the local HAM guys to see what i can find out. I have been looking at my terrain closely now, looking around for hill tops that might "make a good home for a repeater" and now that the leaves are off the trees, its easy to see where the hill tops are.

hello Matt and welcome! i'm also new, but i'm learnging fast. check out my other posts about my GMRS repeater build.

Can you explain that a different way? you mean option 2 or if i want to use the controler as a simplex repeater in some other option? At this point, i am just going to do some experimenting. I just got the programming cable for the tk-880. Wow, this radio has some nice audio. The squelch cuts right off, very tight, there is no burst of "CRRRR!" at the end. Its super clean. So I wonder if that has intellient squelch, so when the signal is weak, it will leave it open a bit longer.

Controlers i'm looking at are: Elektra 2000 / VZ http://hamtronix.com.br/prestashop/product.php?id_product=60 NHRC 3.1 http://www.nhrc.net/nhrc-3.1/ things i like: easy to install, wire terminals for easy hookup easy to program with USB and windows os lots of options to play with later voice recording / ID "audio testing" feature, will repeat back what you say replay last message option for simplex mode alarm notce at end of tail (low battery) Extras that would be cool later: Intelligent Carrier-Activated Switch Digital Audio Delay Repeater with command port

I secured a solar pannel (100w) and charge controler. Working on the battery. I might used an old deep cycle for now, and then replace it with a newer "solar" battery later, after I do some testing on runtime, etc. So now I’m thinking about building my interconnects. I want this to be modular, so i want to have the ability to plug two types of cables into these TK-880 radios (or any similar like TK-840) in two setups. in both cases, i was going to use a Molex 15pin so i can easily dis-connect everything or swap out the parts later. The connector: http://www.molex.com/pdm_docs/sd/003091152_sd.pdf found this at Fry's for $4.50 each set of male+female, plus $5 shipping. Setup 1: with a repeater controller for long term setup. I was going to go from the 15 pin Molex to a project box, and put the repeater controller in the project box. I can port the connectors and LED lights through that box, etc. Powered by 10amp desktop ps, or solar battery. Setup 1a: as a desktop / repeater, the controller can hang in the back of the two radios if they are stacked vertically. Powered by 10 amp desktop powersupply. Setup 2: with a cross-over cable (as i call it now) where the PTT out keys up the other radio and passes audio to it, so it would act as a range extender, for a day trip / hike, or just playing around with location and range. Powered by a solar battery. I think i can make a nice set of cables with heat shrink, solder the ends a little, etc. For power, i was going to use the Anderson Power Poles, 15 amp for the controller and 30 amp for the radios. (the two main sizes) I'm looking for feedback on the cable in terms of shielding the cable.... I was going to cut the ends off one of my many VGA cables and see if i can use the wires inside that cable, because i figured they would have some shielding around them. Shielding all the components seems to be an issue. I was watching this video where the guy wraps all the components with tin foil, even the cables, to reduce the RF leaking back into the system. This video shows the shielding needed on a simplex repeater, i imagine the interference would be worse with a duplex repeater. I’m hoping that with the Kenwood TK-xxx radios, they will be built better and have less radiation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUlX6xZXEU0 When ya'll build your repeaters, do you use shielded wires everywhere? Should the project box for the controler also be shielded? Should i use a metal project box?

thanks for these antenna tips.. overall, I want to work out all the kinks of this antenna system before next summer, meanining start small, and work my way up to a better antenna as i go.... each summer I take the family to the lake and there is a perfect spot at the very top of the hill, i'm guessing hundreds of feet up above all the little hills and vallys. it can see prob a mile or two in each direction accross the lake... i'd love to get this tuned well and help us use our family talk GMRS radios, as well as our other baofeng uv5r and 888s radios tuned to GMRS for some ship to shore and during hiking and running to the trading post for supplies. Last year we could not go very far because of the trees, hills in the way, and we were on the bubble pack talkabouts... but with the repeater as high as it could be, and some better radios (and antennas) it should really make a big difference. as for the build, i'm still waiting for power cables, fuese, and the programming cable. I did manage to get an old TK-840 with the accessory cable for $30 shipped. i knew waiting for a good deal would pay off. now i can either use the 840 plus the 880 together, or move the cable over to my other 880 and use both. I'm thinking i rather have the 2nd 880 as a base station and leave the 840+880 in the repeater box. I dont know yet. as for antennas, i'm testing from home to the kids's school... talk about to talk about wont reach more than a few blocks even on "high" which is 1 watt GMRS, then i went from talk about to the baofeng uv5r with 702 antenna and it went much further, but not quite to the school yet. Then i just got a cheap dual band car mount antenna and i can now talk from home talk abou to car (uv5-r). so i think once i put the antenna on the roof, i should make a clean signal to the school parking lot from home. I'm alos seeing how just driving over small a hill with a 15 ft rise makes a big difference.

how do you like your R100s? I'm looking at one on ebay now but the price is still higher than home made, AND i'm worried that if something breaks, its a lot harder to get parts and fix than just swapping out a TX-880 inside a home made box. Modular seems to be more fun and i'm learning so much doing it myself. I just ordered a box of Anderson Power Pole connectors and in line fuses. This project cost is really adding up.

this is a great thread, i'm also new to GMRS and i have a lot of the same questions. i have a thread for my build using Kenwood TK-880 radios (I still am at the time of this post). I have looked at so much gear, even the R100. It gets to a point where i'm not sure if its better to build from a pair of mobiles and learn a bunch, or just get something already set up and just use it. https://forums.mygmrs.com/topic/333-building-a-repeater-out-of-two-kenwood-tk-880/ I dont want to get too ahead of myself until i see how far this will go just using a roof antenna. If i can give my kids an HT and it will reach to the school like 2 miles away, then that would really be cool. The terrain is the problem... lots of little hills everywhere, and the school is on the other side of a hill. Location will be the biggest factor i think.

naturally i will be looking for a good GMRS antenna i can use on my roof, and/or portable rig i can hang fro ma tree during camping trips, etc.

William, you might be right. I def have time to work up to a better antenna, I just wanted something to get some testing in. This is my learning experneice. I go from family talk to ham, to building rigs, to playing with different antennas. I'm going slow and learning as i go, having fun. thank you for the advice. I agree the antenna and cable are so very important. I hope i can have my rig figured out by summer for my camping and hiking trips. Thats where i'm going to bring it (the portable repeater) for a few days at a time. I think this antenna will be good to play with around town with the kids, when i'm ready to drop $100+ (or whatever price seems right to me) on a good antenna, then i will at least have something to compare it to. so i'm really trying to say that i think you're right, and i will def learn from this. Thank you. oh wait, i just re-read this, and you're suggesting that i was tricked because it does say "small footprint" meaning doesn't reach very far, but yet, the wording was mixed in and used out of context? hmmm. i hope that's not true. i will post more as i go.