Any GMRS users in or around Grove Oklahoma that want to help get Grand lake covered with repeaters?

[WRWK717]

Looking to build 2 repeaters in the area.  

[WRKC935]

OK, great. 

Have you found sites to put the repeaters?

What equipment have you secured for this project?  Repeaters, antenna's, duplexers, feedline?

Have you discussed pricing for tower access or do you have arrangements for access and negotiated agreements?  What rental costs are involved.

Will the repeaters be linked to each other or stand alone?  Will either of them be linked to the mygmrs system? 

 

There is a thread on here titled ' I just got my license and now I want a repeater' or something to that effect.  You should go read it, I believe it will be informative.

 

[WRWK717]

I have access to a few towers in  the area.  owned by the company I work for. I'm looking for help funding the purchase of said equipment.  I will be erecting a 80' tower right outside of Grove within the year.  The other tower is just nw of the lake. I have built many repeaters  systems for Police and Fire Dept. I am new to gmrs but have been building comms sites since 98. 

[WRKC935]

On 3/24/2023 at 8:49 AM, WRWK717 said:

I have access to a few towers in  the area.  owned by the company I work for. I'm looking for help funding the purchase of said equipment.  I will be erecting a 80' tower right outside of Grove within the year.  The other tower is just nw of the lake. I have built many repeaters  systems for Police and Fire Dept. I am new to gmrs but have been building comms sites since 98. 

OK, you work for a two-way shop and can't locate used equipment?  Shop refuses to sell it to you?  Nothing out there still floating around that was decommed during narrowbanding?  No one upgrading to digital formats from analog that you could aquire? 

This isn't a cheap hobby. And we are all in different positions in life and finance.  If you have a number of people running simplex GMRS and a repeater would help them out, pass the hat in your area.  Find some broke stuff and repair it and get it on the air.  But in all honesty, if you are having those sorts of issues, load up the U-haul and come to Columbus Ohio, I am pretty sure if you have the experience you said you do, I bet I know a place that will hire you. 

https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=radio+technician&l=Columbus%2C+Ohio&vjk=906f8ef3f7b7b97e&advn=9428139108340606

But we don't have much need for GMRS repeaters here.  I sort of have that covered in this area.

 

[WRWK717]

I work for broadcast TV and FM now.  I can get it through my company, but I don't want to foot the bill by myself. there is nothing here but ham repeaters.  a lot of simplex traffic in and around the lake on gmrs/frs. If I do build it myself it's going to be low budget and slowly upgrade as I go. we just took down a 80' doppler tower and are trying to get approval from the FAA to erect it since we are close to an airport to use as a training tower. I'm thinking i might go ahead and get my tech license. my current antenna project. and I like the pic of the old ATT tower can't believe it still has the feed horns on top.

[WRWK717]

I do have one question. should I duplex one antenna or run a duel set up with separation of tx/rx  antennas. if you have any advice on that i would love to hear it.  

[WRKC935]

4 hours ago, WRWK717 said:

I do have one question. should I duplex one antenna or run a duel set up with separation of tx/rx  antennas. if you have any advice on that i would love to hear it.  

Depends on if you are wanting to run multiple repeaters on the dual antenna's or just one.

Here's what is required to run dual antenna's.   Transmit combiner and receive multicoupler with window filter.

You CAN'T effectively put up a repeater with two antenna's and no filtering, unless you are going to put 100 feet of seperation between the transmit and receive antenna's.  And of course when you do that, you loose a LOT of transmit distance. 

Find a good duplexer (pass / notch) and run that.  If you are going on broadcast towers, you don't have a choice in this.  A notch duplexer will NOT filter the significant RF that is present at a broadcast site.  And that RF, even out of band will get in the front end of the receiver and deafen it significantly.  So don't bother.  And even with a window filter and all that, it's still a problem.

 

Far as not wanting to foot the bill for a repeater.  Are you looking for one of us to pony up a repeater and duplexer?  Sorry, I don't see that happening. 

As I said before, if there are a large number of GMRS users in your area, pass the hat to them and see if they are willing to donate to the setup of a GMRS repeater.  Come up with something of value to trade for a repeater and duplexer. 

Now I am NOT the person to have this conversation with.  That tower, and that stack of repeaters are all privately owned.  That tower represents 200 bucks a month in electric bill, 2100 a year in property taxes and about a grand a year in maintenance.  That's just keeping the tower lights on and powering the equipment at the site.  This is all being done out of pocket.  ANd I am not independently wealthy.  I work a 8 to 4:30 job just like many others on here.  Gonna toss a couple other pics on here.

One is what we got when we got the keys to the building.

The second is what's there now (actually an older photo, there is more stuff in the building at this point.

And ALL this install, from the electric, setting the racks, installing and cabling the equipment is all done by me. 

 

[WRWK717]

I was trying to find local users around here to see if we could get something going. the two towers I'll be putting them on are small self supporters with county dispatch, public works and one cell carrier. I wish I could afford a setup like what you have going on up there. I was looking at multi element commscope antennas  and installing band pass filters and a icom repeater. and thats about all I can afford right now. unless I used those $400 retrives repeaters. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[gortex2]

15 hours ago, WRWK717 said:

I do have one question. should I duplex one antenna or run a duel set up with separation of tx/rx  antennas. if you have any advice on that i would love to hear it.  

Duplexers all day long. Unless your adding multiple repeaters the filtering, feedline and antenna space will cost more than its worth. You can get a decent duplexer for under $1000 all day long in UHF on used market. You'll spend more than that for the tower crew to get their helmet on.