BTech GMRS RPT50 - NEW 50-Watt GMRS Only Repeater

[LeoG]

2 hours ago, gortex2 said:

Isn't this a repeater ? If so there is no need for 800 frequencies. 99% of the time a repeater is on one channel and one channel only. 

In the description it says it can be used as a base station.  Some people take that literally and think it'll do 1-23 plus the 8 repeater channels.  It will not.  It can't because it has the duplexer built in which would kill the incoming simplex channels. 

It's designed so you can respond with the repeater on the repeater stations with the microphone instead of needing a separate radio to transmit to the repeater to talk.  Some people.... don't understand this.  Even Randy was hoping the description of the "base station" was that of a full range GMRS radio as described.  But he to, found out it can only transmit on the repeater pairs while only receiving on the 467MHz side.

[WRTC928]

10 hours ago, gortex2 said:

Isn't this a repeater ? If so there is no need for 800 frequencies. 99% of the time a repeater is on one channel and one channel only. 

Supposedly, you can enter a bunch of frequencies to scan but not transmit. Not that I really need it, but if it's supposed to do that, I'd like to know why mine won't. Mainly, I want to have one set of 8 repeater pairs with tones and one set without. For some reason, the software I have won't let me enter a repeater pair with no tone set. That seems to me to be a major flaw. 

[WRTC928]

8 hours ago, LeoG said:

In the description it says it can be used as a base station.  Some people take that literally and think it'll do 1-23 plus the 8 repeater channels.  It will not.  It can't because it has the duplexer built in which would kill the incoming simplex channels. 

It's designed so you can respond with the repeater on the repeater stations with the microphone instead of needing a separate radio to transmit to the repeater to talk.  Some people.... don't understand this.  Even Randy was hoping the description of the "base station" was that of a full range GMRS radio as described.  But he to, found out it can only transmit on the repeater pairs while only receiving on the 467MHz side.

Okay, I can live with that. I have other radios. However, I definitely want to be able to program 8 repeater pairs with tones and 8 without, but my program doesn't have any option for "no tone". It has CTCSS, DTCS, and inverse DTCS in the dropdown menu. No "none' or blank space. I'm away from home right now, but I'll email BTech when I get home and see if I can get it clarified.

[LeoG]

There's an option in signalling that is CSQ that I think will run no tone.  But I think it's global.

I can't see a way to do no tone.

[WRTC928]

On 4/18/2025 at 4:49 PM, LeoG said:

There's an option in signalling that is CSQ that I think will run no tone.  But I think it's global.

I can't see a way to do no tone.

I emailed BTech support and got a reply that you can't program "no tone" in the software; you have to do it from the keypad. I said that didn't make a lot of sense when you have software available. She got kinda snotty with me and said, "You do realize it's a GMRS specific repeater and you can't change the repeater pairs?" I said yes, I know that, but it doesn't address my issue. She shot back with, "Most of our customers prefer to do programming from the keypad anyway." I wanted to ask, "Or do they just program from the keypad because your software sucks?" but I figured it would be pointless and just let it go.

Bottom line -- you can do it, but only from the keypad.

[WRYZ926]

Sound similar to the response I got from Bridgecom when I contacted them about the CW ID cutting people off. Their reply after I had to ask several times was to just shut the ID off. 

[WRTC928]

7 minutes ago, WRYZ926 said:

Sound similar to the response I got from Bridgecom when I contacted them about the CW ID cutting people off. Their reply after U had to ask several times was to just shut the ID off. 

It's not the end of the world to have to program "no tone" from the keypad, but it is a bit of a pain in the ass. The whole purpose of programming from software is to avoid crap like that.

[WRYZ926]

You're right, it's not the end of the world. It's sad that too many companies have bad customer service now days.

I'm waiting to see how long a certain company takes to get me a return label for the items I received that I did not order and also how long it takes to get the items I did order. I ordered an Icom IC-2730B and received a Yaesu FT65 instead.

[LeoG]

52 minutes ago, WRTC928 said:

I emailed BTech support and got a reply that you can't program "no tone" in the software; you have to do it from the keypad. I said that didn't make a lot of sense when you have software available. She got kinda snotty with me and said, "You do realize it's a GMRS specific repeater and you can't change the repeater pairs?" I said yes, I know that, but it doesn't address my issue. She shot back with, "Most of our customers prefer to do programming from the keypad anyway." I wanted to ask, "Or do they just program from the keypad because your software sucks?" but I figured it would be pointless and just let it go.

Bottom line -- you can do it, but only from the keypad.

So that's great.  You can program the repeater with no tone just how you wanted it.  So you can't do it through the program, big deal.  How many times do you plan on doing this?  It's generally set it up once and walk away.  Only in the very beginning do you play with everything.  After you get it the way you like you'll rarely ever touch programming again.

[WRTC928]

10 hours ago, LeoG said:

So that's great.  You can program the repeater with no tone just how you wanted it.  So you can't do it through the program, big deal.  How many times do you plan on doing this?  It's generally set it up once and walk away.  Only in the very beginning do you play with everything.  After you get it the way you like you'll rarely ever touch programming again.

That's true. As I said, it's not the end of the world. It just irks me that I can't do everything in one step via the software. I don't know much about software design, but it seems to me that it wouldn't have been very difficult to make it possible to do it in the program.

[LeoG]

Well, I'm not sure if you know this.  But it's a fairly new repeater that's only been out for a year and they actually have been upgrading it.  The no tone is an upgrade from the original which had no option for that at all.  It also didn't have a squelch which is essential to a no tone system.  So most likely the software hasn't been caught up yet.

And it's not like they gave you the function and no way to activate it.  It's a small annoyance to deal with while they are putting more thought into the machine to give it more features than when you bought it originally.

When I got mine there was no squelch, no DCS, no microphone to talk into only program, it didn't have a no tone option and a few other small things.  The menu system was still cluttered with another versions options which did nothing in this version and they cleaned that up. So my machine has had nice upgrades while you look at it as a basic machine because that's where they were in the ongoing development of this repeater.

[WRTC928]

27 minutes ago, LeoG said:

Well, I'm not sure if you know this.  But it's a fairly new repeater that's only been out for a year and they actually have been upgrading it.  The no tone is an upgrade from the original which had no option for that at all.  It also didn't have a squelch which is essential to a no tone system.  So most likely the software hasn't been caught up yet.

And it's not like they gave you the function and no way to activate it.  It's a small annoyance to deal with while they are putting more thought into the machine to give it more features than when you bought it originally.

When I got mine there was no squelch, no DCS, no microphone to talk into only program, it didn't have a no tone option and a few other small things.  The menu system was still cluttered with another versions options which did nothing in this version and they cleaned that up. So my machine has had nice upgrades while you look at it as a basic machine because that's where they were in the ongoing development of this repeater.

Fair enough.