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.

[WRVS658]

Any further updates on any RPT50 failures or does all seem working as it should?

My Motorola CM200 shot craps (due to low duty cycle I suspect) and am considering bucking up for the Btech repeater.

Thanks… Doug

[LeoG]

I've had mine up and running since early September '24.  I had one of the originals and I had to do an update to make the DCS tones work.  A second update to make the microphone active along with some menu changes.  They sent me a new duplexer because the batch that was installed in the earlier versions didn't work well.  I found out they were tuned wrong by sending it to Marc and he said it was centered on 800 instead of 635, not even within the bandwidth.

Since the duplexer change over I've had it up and running without much hassle.  I am able to get 50 watts out of the socket easily.  I have to keep the power supply voltage at 12.2 volts otherwise it'll push out more.

I swapped my wideband duplexer to a single channel tuned duplexer and really haven't noticed much of a difference in reception sensitivity so the wideband tuned duplexer works pretty well.

[WRVS658]

Thanks for the reply Leo. Much appreciated!

[wbjohnston]

 

I set up my 50 a month ago and as an experienced ham I’ve learned, like many of us, the art of interpreting Chinese produced manuals. I’ll play devils advocate here: They have come along way with providing manuals at some point that are more concise and clear. I guess they get tired of emails and telephone inquiries for clarification and decided to invest time and money and producing a manual that is more in line with what the customers need. As in the case of the RPT50 I guessing that it hasn’t generated enough sales/profit to invest in cleanup their operating manual. It is an art and there are people that make a living producing product manuals here in United States. It is expensive but well worth the investment and have been evolved with a big project that cost us thousands of dollars but in the end it was a manual written by native English speakers for native English consumers. The company that produces this repeater have apparently numerous variations planned. All pretty much are the same function (repeater), but different modes, i.e. VHF version, business, digital, etc. The build quality is excellent. Given that frequently repeaters are set up and operating in some harsh environments dealing with dust and heat the engineers took that into. consideration and made a good box. My concern is how well the internal duplexes will fair in time. This is new cutting edge technology, and has not been adopted by any other repeater builders that I know of so uncharted waters. Fortunately, their system is taken that into consideration and allowed for potential external duplicator implementation; smart. This system is basically a turn key, but even so there are many options with poor or no explanation in the present manual. For example, the ID/morse code option (every 15 mins if running an open system here in the US) has options that if set wrong would conflict and it’s poorly explained in the manual and it is not intuitive. That’s the only problem I’ve had with the system to date. I set it for 15 minutes and it’ll do that for several hours and then stop sending the ID. Many repeater owners just ignore that rule and I haven’t heard of anyone getting a letter from the FCC, but there is a potential. It’s a rule and not a law. In my case, I have to make it so that it abide by the rules given that the system is mainly provided for CERT teams (FEMA trained) but the system remains in a open configuration unless our Emergency Operation Center is activated. Given time I’m sure that if not the RPT50 team someone will produces a much needed clear precise manual. Present / temporary setup of RPT50 is in my ham shack.  I’m getting 42 W output through a dummy load with a 2.1 SWR.  Within the next few weeks, I’ll update after I move the system to the opposite end of the house to reduce potential of deceasing, adding much improved high gain omni directional antenna fed through a shorter coax run with LMR400. I will be gaining an additional 20 feet height off the roof from present system.  Right now I’m able to pretty well saturate an area of 5 mile radius in a very densely populated urban area that a 5 W HT can hit with little problems.  Amazingly, I live in a unique place that has a narrow geographical conduit going from the Valley floor (I5 / 167) that shoots northward into downtown Seattle that is 40 miles away.  Same 5 W HT can work my repeater clear as a bell.  Goes to show you that it’s all about line of site.  One can hit the ISS with a 5 W HT and that’s 250 miles away but there’s no terrain.

Regards, WRBQ468 / KD7GXN

 

 

[LeoG]

The original duplexer in the RPT50 was either poorly tuned or just crap.  The new one they sent to me was much better.  Same part number different manufacturer.  The receive sensitivity was much better.  I purchased another duplexer from Btech and then had it tuned to my frequency.  Didn't seem to make much of a difference and after a while seemed to degrade a bit so I put the other one back in.  I still wasn't satisfied and after a while the sensitivity waned again.  My RPT50 would put out 50 watts after the duplexer and more.  I kept the power supply at 12.2v to stay at 50 watts.  The input was around 65 watts.  I believe the duplexer was struggling with the input power the transmitter was giving it.

I changed out to a 100 watt duplexer an XLT I believe.  I swapped out the rear connectors from SMA>N to N>N and just used the cables that existed internally.  That helped and my normal testing route that I have setup was hitting much better now.  Later on I changed out my antenna, same one as I thought the one I had up there was defective.  The omni-directional pattern wasn't equal.  Plus when I put the antenna up originally, my waterproofing was non existent.  With the new antenna system, the range wasn't any better but the sound quality increased a good bit.

The only reoccurring issue I have is I run the courtesy beep and after a while the modulation strength gets softer.  I have to reboot the repeater and all is well again.