coryb27

If you are using it for talking truck to truck off road you would have no issues getting several miles with a 6" tall 1/4 wave antenna. UHF antennas in the GMRS band are not real tall and the CB firestick is 27MHz and would never work in GMRS. Mobile radios need to be programed with a computer, most of use program our handhelds with computers as well.

Several mobiles come with removable faces for remote mounting. Most modern mobile radios are between 25 and 50 watts and can hold 100's if not a 1000 channels, it all depends on what you want to spend. This is my truck, the radio is a Motorola XPR 5550 with handheld control head, as you can see antennas for this band can be as small as 6" and still talk 40 miles. This is a part 90 radio not a part 95 radio if that is important to you. I use this on my business system and GMRS. HAMS are also starting to buy this type of radio. This unit will set you back about $1100 but well worth the features and the quality of its construction meets or exceeds several mill specs.

Antenna Porn Andrew DB408-B 180' of 7/8 Hard line 4' Side arm Now all I need is some good weather, my climber and a few friends!

I keep the 8 repeater channels with the travel tone set on them in a zone and scan well on road trips,its amazing what you will hear and even more so the amount of repeaters that will squelch back that are not listed anyplace. Just for fun I have the entire frs/gmrs list programed into a zone, it goes nuts around parks, campgrounds, sports events etc... Last year I was in the bad lands park in SD, the channels where so busy it sounded like CB channel 6 any day around noon. San Diego looks kind of quiet, may not be a bad idea to put a family repeater on a mountain somewhere.

Hello Dustin, Welcome to the myGMRS forums! Repeaters are privately owned unless its listed as open and provide the PL / DPL needed to access it. Most GMRS repeaters are stand alone devices and cover a radius somewhere between 5 and 100 miles depending on the type of equipment used to access it and the height of the repeaters antenna and its quality of equipment. I use GMRS as a hobby and backup communications, It is not reliable enough in the event of a life threatening emergency. Since all GMRS repeaters are privately owned you just never know how somebody set up the site. I have seen sites cobbled together with 2 old mobiles, a repeater controller, some RG58 cable and a homemade antenna. I personally only run commercial grade repeaters, 7/8 hardline cable, 16 bay Dipole antennas and try to use towers that offer at min 100' of height. What it comes down to is how much money a site owner is willing to spend and what is the intended use of the repeater. Some people build them for personal use and some people build them for anybody to use. I dont care who uses mine so long as they are legal and dont abuse it. I have access to other systems that require permission from the owner, this can even include the owner checking your license and entering that information into a log book. I hope this helps answer some of your questions, I am sure others will chime in as this site is a library of knowledge. Corey

My repeater is only a 150 AGL and I get a solid 45 miles in all directions, not sure why 100' would only give 15 miles LOS? I am getting almost 15 miles of HT coverage. From experience, if you have a decent repeater, good cable, quality antenna 100' of the ground and only see 15 miles something is wrong. I would have to estimate 25+ depending on terrain and type of equipment your using to work the repeater. Just my $.02 Corey

I have a Motorola pre-selector from an MTR 2000 I would be willing to donate to a good cause.

anything that fits the radio that covers the 450 to 470 band.

Keep us posted!

The only thing i would recommend on that setup is to get an antenna that covers the GMRS band, the Nagoya you listed above is a HAM band antenna.

There are big repeaters all over your area, sign up for an account and you can reach out to the owners and ask permission to use.

I would bet if you get rid of the LMR400 and RG58 things will improve significantly. Good luck on the tower hunt, look around and see if you have any independent tower owners in your area. I rent my space from a locally owned tower company and the rates are far better then places like Crown Castle and American Tower. Some local radio stations may even let you put up a community repeater for little or no cost.

UPDATE! Come on your killing us, how does it work!!!

I would guess most of the users here are using more advanced equipment that offers repeater operation. I am not sure if the Midland GXT5000 Radio is repeater capable or not. I noticed the Midland GXT5000 radio was marketed as a 36 mile 22 channel radio. The 36 miles is not practical in the real world unless you had 2 people in direct line of sight, some smaller repeaters running 40 watts dont offer 36 miles of coverage. From experience you will only see 1 maybe 2 miles and your contacts may be limited as you can not talk to anybody using a repeater and any simplex contacts would need to be on the same PL or DPL privacy tones. Unless you have a lot of simplex users in your community you may not hear anything other then kids playing hide and go seek. If this is a service you are interested in for hobby and daily use I would recommend getting a portable that can do repeaters or set up a small base station. Equipment can be found used on ebay rather cheep, whatever you purchase be sure you can program it. I know a lot of people new to the hobby start with the baofang UHF or DUAL band radios. You can purchase a simple handheld on Amazon with a better antenna and programming cable for under 50 bucks. Theses radios can be programmed with a free software package called CHIRP that can be googled and downloaded for free. Understand theses radios are more of a HAM radio and are not certified for use on GMRS but nobody has ever been cited for it as long as you abide by the rules. This type of radio is how i learned to program and the reason i decided to expand on the hobby, like i said not part 95 certified but none the less good learning equipment, easy to program and easy on the wallet.

From the looks of where you live I bet a huge GMRS repeater would be vary useful for the surrounding community. Do you have a lot of operators in your area? How are the public communication systems?

The GMRS band has been open here in Wisconsin. I was able to work some repeaters 150 plus miles away. Talked to several LAG members and a few random people. Anybody else out distance talking today?

My last tower climb was to install an antenna at 150', cost me $800 but it was for my business system. I use the same guy for all my climbs be it GMRS or Business he does an awesome job. So have you tested range on the new repeater yet?

Let us know when you get it on the air, dont forget the range reports! I get down to you area a few times a year for work, once you get the tones let me know and i will holler next time i am in range!

Just got 180' of 7/8 and 100' of 1/2 in yesterday. 7/8 for my business system and the 1/2 is going to another GMRS repeater.

I like to know who is using it but i dont keep records and believe in the open repeater concept. Once I changed from permission only to community access repeaters I noticed the usage number starting to climb. I built it so others could use it, the equipment does no good to anybody sitting idle for 90% of the time. My hope is to generate some local interest in the hobby by offering solid systems with good coverage areas without the hassle of having to get permission.

Logan, I have searched the part 95 rules and can fine no place that says as a repeater owner it is my responsibility to verify the license status of any users. My repeater is listed as open and I do not police it as we do not have issues like the people in NYC. My second issue is your statement "if you allow unlicensed users you could be held liable" but legal advisement from my attorney says if I did not commit a crime I am not liable, since I am licensed it would be the person using my system illegally that is responsible for there own actions. I totally understand that Ignorance of the LAW is not a legal defense but misinterpretation of the law does not make it rule. Just to be sure I searched the FCC legal fillings and could not find a single instance of a repeater owner being held responsible for the actions of another user.

If you purchased the base model Rigol spectrum analyzer with the sweep generator ($1500 Bucks) it will not do VSWR without an additional license key as well it requires a VSWR bridge. The 2 options Cost another $1325 purchased as accessories. Corey Corey

You will have to pay for FCC Coordination and it is assigned to a location so you would not be able to just move it. I have 3 repeater pairs and it costs about $600 a pair for 10 years. I run my commercial system DMR as the equipment costs less and offers easy multi site connections with an internet connection.

My suggestion to test between the radio and duplexer would have told you if the tune was good or not.