10 watt repeater or higher wattage mobile.

[WRYZ926]

1 hour ago, nokones said:

Even if the repeater station is putting out 50 watts, you're not going to see that much power coming out of the duplexer. Most repeater stations, only put out about 40 watts and you be lucky to see about 28 watts out of the duplexer.

This is correct. And in the case of the Midland/Retevis 10 watt repeaters, you will only see about 5-6 watts out after the duplexer. We are getting 30 watts out after the duplexer on our 50 watt Bridgecom GMRS repeater. We still are getting a 30-35 mile radius of coverage, granted our antennas are at 400 feet above ground.

 

2 hours ago, gortex2 said:

If your going to use a pole barn, put the repeater as close to the antenna as possiblee to limit cable loss. thats the cool part about the midland and RT97. Just run a power cord to it. A decent antenna and a 3' piece of cable terminated with proper connectors will go along way.

And you can get away with using a good quality RG8 if the overall run is 6 feet or less. You won't notice much difference in loss between RG8, RG8U or LMR400 at such short lengths. I run RG-8U jumpers in my shack with the longest one being 6 foot. Most are three feet or less. IF anyone wants to see the loss for themselves then use the https://kv5r.com/ham-radio/coax-loss-calculator/

The most important thing is to use a good quality coax with good connectors.