Vertex Standard EVX-R70 Repeater

[WQGJ587]

First and for-most,,, the thing that confuses me about this repeater,,, is its 16 Channel.

What for.  there is no way to change channels.   in order to do so,  you have to physically hook to the repeater, load the CPS and reprogram the repeater...

Can someone offer some insight on this, as to my confusion, and enlighten my old brain on this one?

Thanks

Tommy Abner

[Radioguy7268]

There are ways to do channel steering through the rear accessory connector - and programming the GPIO pins, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone doing it on the lower end repeaters.

As you discovered, there is no real reason to do anything more than 1 channel for most of us.

Other than that, it's just legacy from the original mobile radios that are inside the box - and someone decided that advertising a 16 channel repeater was more impressive than just a single channel.

[gortex2]

As said there are ways to do it but in common practice it does not happen. I did have one customer who had 3 PL/DPL codes as they moved around. We had a TRA attached and a MC2000 remote and they could change up to 4 channels. Same frequency just different tones. This was on an XPR model but its the same radio. 

In everyday use 1 channel is all you need. 

[WQGJ587]

Thanks for the info everyone.

 

Yea,, i really only need one channel,,, but would have been nice if it had more tones than just one...

 

Thanks again for info.

Regards

Tommy

[Radioguy7268]

You can certainly use an external controller & set it up like a community repeater with multiple PL or Tone groups.

If that's what you want, there are other Repeater options out there with that feature built in, but a $75 or $100 used external controller will do the job.  I doubt you would want to manually switch tone groups.

[WQGJ587]

Radioguy,     would that be a big deal to set up?  any ideals or recommendations

.

 

Tommy

[Radioguy7268]

Well,  First you should make sure that is what you want to do. From what you've said, it's possible that you're looking for a multi-tone panel to separate user groups on your repeater by PL tone.

Adding an external tone panel to your repeater is not quite at the level of simple, but it has been done, and there are panels (and cables) designed to work with the Vertex EVX-R70 repeaters (and it's cousin the Motorola XPR8400). There's probably some online instructions out there on Repeater-Builder or similar sites. I'd peg it as a project for intermediate with skills to advanced/experienced.

The inexpensive way for someone with experience would be to buy a good used tone panel (I've seen used Trident Raider panels go for less than $50 with free shipping on eBay) and find some online pinouts for crafting your own cable. You would also need some equipment to set deviation levels and repeat audio, and you would need to reprogram the repeater to function as a base with an external control panel.

Without knowing your skill set, patience, and equipment - it's kind of hard to give a recommendation. Trading out your repeater for another unit that already has a Multi-tone function built in (Kenwood TKR) might be an option.