alexd51

I was in the same boat and i was also going the KG1000. Thank God they were out of stock when i decided to purchase and in the meantime i started looking at alternatives.
This was conclusion.
2 KG1000 roughly close to $800
Antenna and feed line $300
Power supply $120 after i got to this point $1200 i decided to look in another direction.
Retevis RT97 $500 plus antenna and feed line again close to $1K and the retevis is nice , self contained and portable but the power is laughable for the price. Everything has it's place and this RT97 is good as a portable repeater but not for a home environment.
Looked in eBay and found a used Vertex Standard VXR 7000 price range from  $395 to $600 mostly without duplexer. Chinese duplexer about $150 tuned and delivered so this was looking like the best option with a good proven and reliable repeater. I found by chance a VXR 7000 with the duplexer for about $500 and i pulled the plug and got it.Antenna was $206 with tax of amazon and 75' of cable was another $100. I got 2 top rail poles from home depot and installed the antenna at 20' high and at that range i am getting close to 20 miles from it. I also bought a tower so the antenna will be soon at 60' and that should give me more coverage.
I might have spent close to the price of doing the KG1000 repeater but i have a true repeater that is doing exactly what it was designed to do instead of putting parts together. I will not tell you what to do but from my experience you will spend less money buying a repeater than making one out of radios unless you already have the radios on hand then you will be saving some money if not then i think my route will be cheaper and more reliable.

You can also use the /m and that will get you on the manufacturer mode, or like i like to call it "God Mode" it will ask you for the password to get into manufacturer mode ansho-bango is the pass.
If you get the European version of CE27 then you can change to wideband. Just a word about the European version, they mislabeled the upload and download to radio, they inverted them. Download means sending the codeplug to the radio and upload means downloading the codeplug to your computer.

I was in the same boat and i was also going the KG1000. Thank God they were out of stock when i decided to purchase and in the meantime i started looking at alternatives.
This was conclusion.
2 KG1000 roughly close to $800
Antenna and feed line $300
Power supply $120 after i got to this point $1200 i decided to look in another direction.
Retevis RT97 $500 plus antenna and feed line again close to $1K and the retevis is nice , self contained and portable but the power is laughable for the price. Everything has it's place and this RT97 is good as a portable repeater but not for a home environment.
Looked in eBay and found a used Vertex Standard VXR 7000 price range from  $395 to $600 mostly without duplexer. Chinese duplexer about $150 tuned and delivered so this was looking like the best option with a good proven and reliable repeater. I found by chance a VXR 7000 with the duplexer for about $500 and i pulled the plug and got it.Antenna was $206 with tax of amazon and 75' of cable was another $100. I got 2 top rail poles from home depot and installed the antenna at 20' high and at that range i am getting close to 20 miles from it. I also bought a tower so the antenna will be soon at 60' and that should give me more coverage.
I might have spent close to the price of doing the KG1000 repeater but i have a true repeater that is doing exactly what it was designed to do instead of putting parts together. I will not tell you what to do but from my experience you will spend less money buying a repeater than making one out of radios unless you already have the radios on hand then you will be saving some money if not then i think my route will be cheaper and more reliable.

Basic repeater instructions would be to program it to your intended frequencies (Transmit on the Lower frequency, Receive on the Higher frequency) - and for GMRS, make sure that the channel is set to 25kHz wideband. You would also need to let them know the specific Tone code (PL) or DPL that you plan to use.
Now beyond that, there are tweaks and settings (as well as a tuning procedure specific to the MTR2000 that most hobbyists are NOT qualified to perform) - but if it's a used repeater, those functions should have already been set and tuned, and now the new frequencies just need to be programmed in, and then everything double checked on a Station Monitor.  Used-Radios.com is more than capable of doing all of that, and doing it well.
Unless you have some exotic use case beyond a simple repeater, there isn't all that much information to give them. Freq's along with your chosen PL/DPL, bandwidth, and your FCC call sign if you desire CWID.

I have bought 2 radios and a repeater from them and i cant say nothing bad about them they have gone above and beyond in my case even when the mistake was my fault.

As mentioned above, there's no need to program any other frequency on a repeater  except what you will be using for the repeater. In my case my repeater also can be switched to act like a base radio so i did program a few repeaters in my area so i switch to base and i can transmit to those repeaters and when im done switch back to repeater mode.
Being a MOTOROLA getting the software for yourself is a bit costly and to be honest Motorola software is not easy for a novice there's so many ways you can screw up your repeater. Ask them if they can send you the codeplug of the radio once they program it that way you have a virgin codeplug in case anything goes wrong with the repeater.

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

Ah perfecto, perfecto, aqui tambien se habla Español... un saludo.
G.

Muchos hablamos español pero no en el forum ?

Yes - along with some amateur repeaters that also run reverse split - but not in GMRS, and still certainly worth questioning the information given when someone tells you that their repeater is going to Transmit on the 467.xxx, and Receive on the 462.xxx   
That's more than an "I screwed up".  That's closer to "I didn't have a clue."
 
 

Is the duplexer already tuned for your desired frequency? Is vendor tuning the duplexer for your desired frequency?
If no in both cases, then you'll have to get the duplexer tuned. I assume you know this already, but wanted to mention it since the duplexer in the repeater will likely be tuned for a different frequency than what you plan to use.
I really like the VXR-7000 and have found it to be about the most cost-effective repeater solution available. For mine, I went with a flat-pack duplexer that I installed inside the unit, so it's self contained. I had to fabricate a mount for it because I didn't have the factory mount, and I don't think it would have worked with the duplexer I bought.
I just made two "straps" out of 1/8" x 3/4" flat stock, and bought metric screws to attach to the factory mounting holes. I used a little foam padding for cushion and strapped the duplexer to the repeater, and arranged the cables as necessary.
It is working well for me.
I also bought a programming cable with the CE-27 program disk which allows me to program the VXR-7000 easily.

Congrats!

You were not dreaming because i saw the same repeater. I got to program it on my HT but once i was in the area i could not key up the repeater so i deleted it from my HT. After that i have never seen it again on the map.

I really like this idea here.

I did look it up and my address in on it.  Hope Rich see this post as I agree... as LEO they do not print our address on checks.
Jack
 

The ability to hide our full street address when someone looks up our call sign!!!! 
 City and state are fine but why show them our full physical street address? 
 

This is true, Alexandria 675 is hidden. It is very much in use. I actually posted bitching about not knowing which repeater was in use. Till I found the setting. It is very much alive. Maybe a setting to say when the repeater was last heard to keep a repeater that is alive showing on the map. I found it hard to contact the repeater owner, not sure if it traded hand or the e-mail went into oblivion.

Don't assume the coverage shown on the map display in My GMRS is accurate. It's a generalization based on assumptions such a antenna height, efficiency and generally flat terrain. Software that uses more accurate Longley-Rice propagation models are very expensive and those do include terrain modeling showing coverage holes used by hills and ridges.

I'd like to be able to see the map with __all__ coverage circles __at the same time.__ Should make it much easier to tell where repeater coverage is required!

Personally, I like this idea. However, I suspect it will be controversial. May I suggest that rather than adding this to the official repeater listing, you could create a thread in the Private Discussion topic to report member discoveries.  In that case, other members with more information, like the owner does not want it used by others, or it is officially open, etc. could also contribute.

I would suggest an addition to the repeater listings that would allow some degree of crowd sourcing of current status. In other words, let users add something like a QSL card or signal report. It could be simply binary as did or did not work. Or, it could be more detailed. Location at the time of the report, signal strength, etc.
 
Then, "last verified access" could be added to the repeater report page and, possibly, people could search on, reported active in the last: 30, 60, 90 days, etc.
 
In the signal report it might also be possible to report if anything differed from the listing, like Frequency, PL, or location. The specific information would not be given, except in the case of a fully-open repeater. But, at least other users would know there had been a change.
 
And, finally. The owner could receive an, optional, email each time a signal report was received.
 
In any case, the basic point is even if the owners do not update their listings, other users could help a bit.

>What's missing from myGMRS.com?
 
A dark theme!

How about a classified section?
I second the chat room....