SteveShannon

Garmin also has a monochrome model without the touch screen. It displays a map, but doesn’t have the full top mapping of their top end. The Rino 700 is only $349 MSRP and can sometimes be found for less at Cabelas or places like it. https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/576031

Garmin still has position reporting and text messaging in their GMRS Rino lineup. The top of the line is the 755T https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/534007/pn/010-01958-15 i have a model that’s a couple years older and I like it fine. Repeater support is built in, although disabled by default and there’s no way to memorize CTCSS codes or split tones for multiple repeaters on a single frequency, as far as I can tell on mine. I haven’t looked at the manual for this newest iteration.

Rich, Would the external repeater interface allow an automatic ID to be added?

@WRFP399 That’s pretty slick. Because I only need it once a month and during that time to listen for 7-8 hours at a time and possibly transmit for a total of (much) less than an hour, I probably wouldn’t even add the solar charger, at least initially. I’ll look into the antenna (N9TAX) and I’ll gladly pore over your posts on battery life. Nothing beats empirical data! Thanks!

477.985 https://forums.radioreference.com/threads/details-of-proud-boy-baofeng-usage-on-january-6.423763/

It really depends on the terrain, of course. When we’re in the Black Rock desert or some other dry lake bed we get miles of coverage. In the hills of our Montana launch site we lose contact when we’re half a mile away on opposite sides of a hill. I’m thinking about trying an inexpensive Retevis RT-97 based man portable temporary repeater on a hill to the east, the crest of which I believe is visible from most of the gullies to our north. I’m curious to see if the location information will be passed through the repeater. That’s interesting about your use of the Rino in Afghanistan. Did you have to load special maps or did Garmin have ones that were sufficient?

I’m WROM258 from Butte, Montana. I’m a retired engineer. My name is Steve. I’m into high power rocketry. We use Garmin Rino GMRS radios to communicate when we’re out on the range recovering rockets. I’m working on getting my ham license as well. Thanks for letting me learn!

That appears to be a broken link.

That’s an idea. An in-ground socket. Maybe a flange at the top to make it easy to find. I’d probably plug it so it doesn’t fill with dirt between launches. Thanks for the idea.

Thanks for the info. I’ll look at those, but based on my anticipated usage, I doubt we’ll deplete the battery charge during a typical launch as it is. We’ve used SLA 12v x 7000 mAh batteries for 19 years for the launch system and I can count on one hand the number of times we’ve had a battery fail. I recycled ten or so last year that were 18 years old, but continued working. If I ever get through the big pile of batteries that’s in my shop I’ll be very eager to try whatever new technology is available.

I probably could get away with driving a post, but we share it with a rancher who grazes his cattle there. If something happened and he complained to the BLM we might lose access. I’d rather not chance it. Instead I thought I’d use the weight of the batteries to stabilize the antenna base. As I learn more about antennas I might be forced to admit you’re right. If so I’ll contact the rancher and the BLM before driving a post. We use aluminum 1010 rail for our launch rails and we have some tripod or quad pod bases for launch pads that I thought I might be able to repurpose as an antenna base, weighted down with the SLA batteries.

Our rockets are anywhere from model rockets to 30 pounds or so. I haven’t gotten my hands on a LoRa gadget yet. So far I’ve used rf beepers (raptor xmitters were the most common 10 years ago) and 915 MHz gps and telemetry devices, but a pair of GPS LoRa T-Beams is actually on my Amazon wishlist. My kids are always wanting to know what to get me for Christmas, so I didn’t buy them for myself yet. There is a rocket tracker manufacturer that I think uses LoRa. He advertises that his trackers will form a mesh network. The hill is 1500 feet away and maybe 30-50 feet higher (swag) than where we’re permitted to launch. The hill blocks transmissions to the other side of itself as it is, so I thought maybe I could use it.

Thank you for the welcome. I probably looked right past the forum where I should introduce myself. I absolutely agree that lipos would be lighter. However, I have a hundred or so SLA batteries and I thought that I could use them as ballast for the antenna base as well. I might end up switching to lipos after lugging them to the top of the hill a couple times. Or maybe I’ll get one of the younger rocketeers to carry them... ?

Very new guy here, but what I first noticed is the notion that a cheap repeater won’t do what a person wants, but that’s entirely based on an assumption of what that person wants, without ever asking. So, here’s my use case: I’m in an amateur rocketry club, launching from hilly land. The hills make simplex communications impossible when we’re retrieving rockets, even though the range is always under five miles and usually within one mile. However, there’s a tall hill to the east which is visible from most places. I suspect that hill would make a good spot for a temporary repeater in a man portable can. Because it’s BLM property, nothing permanent can be erected. The repeater is only needed one day per month for about 8 hours and total air time is probably under a half hour. There are no GMRS repeaters within maybe 100 miles. This seems like something that the Retevis RT-97 might do well. Because I would have to carry it to the top of the hill, it has to be something lightweight. We may not drive off-road and no roads go to the top of that hill. This would probably be paid for out of my own pocket. Why wouldn’t something like the Retevis, a whip antenna, and a couple SLA batteries in a five gallon bucket be appropriate for my purposes? Thanks for your help, Noob Steve WROM258