Bridgecom BCR-40U repeaters.

[WRYZ926]

Well I figured it was time for a review of the Bridgecom BCR-40U repeater now that we have had ours on line for 12 months.

The good;

The repeater works pretty good for the most part and the sound and duty cycle is good.

The bad:

First the built in CW ID cuts people off and no one can transmit on the repeater while the ID is transmitting.

Second, the CW ID is ONLY transmitted without tones. So if you have receive tones set on your radio, you will never hear the CW ID which leads to the first problem of getting cutoff mid transmission.

The UGLY:

Bridgecom customer service is non existent when it comes to their repeaters. I submitted my first support ticket only to have them reply to shut the CW ID off. To make it worse, they closed the ticket before I could even reply to them. 

I then tried contacting them by phone and on their Facebook page to try and get some answers. This went nowhere. And Yes I was polite every time I contacted Bridgecom.

I had to submit yet another ticket and explain everything over again along with asking them not to close the ticket before I could reply to their answers. Well they did that. But their answers were far from helpful. Again they stated to just turn the CW ID off and they had no clue why it was cutting people off mid sentence. Their only other suggestion was to use an external control

I try my best to be polite with customer service since I know how people can be. But there was no excuse on how I was treated. To make it worse, I made a comment on their Face book page only to have Bridgecom delete it. It seems they don't want people to see any negative reviews or negative comments. Needless to say I will never recommend any of their products again based on their poor customer service.

Here is a screen shot of my comment when I received the notice that it was deleted.

[WRYZ926]

I also found out that e-ham will delete any review that says anything negative about customer service. Shouldn't that be included in any review? 

[WRUE951]

Bridgecom is using the Maxon 8402 radios for their repeater..  I built a home-brew repeater using two of these radios and had the same issue when the radios were patched together to work as a repeater.  I then decided to bypass the radio repeater logic and jumper and used an ICS controller with open repeater source code..   It worked great, just as a controller is suppose to..   It was a pain in the a$$ to configure the jumper from the two radios but with some help from some Ham buddies we nailed it..  The only way you can get an off the self controller to work is to abandon the manufacture repeater jumper and design one to allow the repeater to rely 100% on the controller rather than the radios inside logic to to perform the control.  I dont know why Bridgcoom is depending on the radio logic to run the controller function.  They need to abandon the jumper and resort to a real contoller, but they won't because they would then have to build a separate controller, in my case cost me a whopping $150 bucks...   I don't use the Maxon repeater anymore because i have since gone to a 'real' repeater that has the CW built in, but i gott say, it was one hell of a nice repeater,  works just as good as the Hytera  i now have..  

[WRYZ926]

I do have the instructions for setting up the Bridgecom to use an external controller along with a sheet showing the cable pinout for connecting the two. Our plans are to connect the Bridgecom GMRS repeater and one of our 70cm repeaters (Motorola) to an ARCOM RC-210 controller once it arrives.

I forgot to add earlier that we bought our BCR-40U without the built in duplexer. We had a spare duplexer that is higher quality sitting around so decided to use it instead.  

My biggest gripes was the lack of customer support and the fact that they deleted any negative reviews on Facebook. I bet they do the same on their own website too.

I figured I would post my review to help save people some headaches if they are looking to get a Bridgecom GMRS repeater and want the CW ID to work as expected without having to buy an additional controller.