The making of a field programmable portable repeater

[kpoe_28]

Step 1. portable case

Step 2. cooling fan installed

Step 3. Power for weeks of battery usage. Picked this up at a pawn shop for $10 bucks!

Step 4. Install power outlets, one for each radio and one for the repeater controller

Step 5. Wire up the outlets and fit to case....

Step 6. Install Duplexer, RX radio, TX radio, Controller

Step 7. outfit it with a magmount 5db gain antenna, stored inside the case when not in use

Step 8. charger plug from the back of the battery pack as been relocated to the side of case. Can keep it charged in the house with the supplied power pack that plug into 110v outlet or can plug into cig plug in car or truck for charging. Ready to go, Great for camping trips, Deer hunters special! Take it to the lake with large groups, or donate to disaster are for radio comm's ( tornado )

 

[kpoe_28]

More picturs

 

[N0BDW]

This is awesome!!

 

[jim202]

How do you take care of the issue that a duplexer is tuned to a single frequency? If you change frequencies of the radios more than a 100 KHz or so, the performance will drop like a rock. The system will either become deaf or have all sorts of interference from the radio used as the transmitter.

You have a good idea, but it has frequency agile limitations. Unless you keep the test equipment with you to retune the duplexer, I would expect to see operational problems away from the original tuned frequency.

 

[mm]

Not to mention that those Chinese radios have terrible shielding, dynamic range and IMD specs's, even with a good tuned duplexer you'll have desense problems between the tx and rx radio.

 

[KI4VBR]

Geeeze....Lighten Up.

Not to mention that those Chinese radios have terrible shielding, dynamic range and IMD specs's, even with a good tuned duplexer you'll have desense problems between the tx and rx radio.

Does anyone want to complain about how the guy parts his hair too? Go on....seems like you may be having a lousy day so why not complain about that too.

Lighten up and give the guy some credit. If you want to show off your knowledge, try helping someone out and be a real "Elmer".

It is stuff like this that turned me away from the hobby last time......grouchy old men never die I guess.

Vince

 

[prcguy]

You must not have experience with the Chinese radios, they work fine for low power repeaters.
prcguy

Not to mention that those Chinese radios have terrible shielding, dynamic range and IMD specs's, even with a good tuned duplexer you'll have desense problems between the tx and rx radio.

 

[simplec6]

Why not take the 12v battery out of that power pack ya got there? That plastic casing is taking up a ton of valuable real estate?

 

[kayn1n32008]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

Not to mention that those Chinese radios have terrible shielding, dynamic range and IMD specs's, even with a good tuned duplexer you'll have desense problems between the tx and rx radio.

5w into 60 odd db of isolation on a 5Mhz split... He will be fine

 

[kpoe_28]

I have thought about taking that battery out of the case to free up a little room and weight. The split on my freq's are 7.160mhz apart,I've tried it and seems to work just fine. Also I can re-tune the duplexer whenever need be, I have the equipment for that. I've also made one but as a base using two yaesu Ft-2900's and a homebrew slim jim antenna, antenna is 100 foot up running 10 watts with about 35-40 mile coverage.
It's a work in progress, being disable and setting at home all the time and being bored that's all I have.......is time on my hands.


73's

 

[N8IAA]

Outstanding setup. Low power and minimum expenditure. Love it!
Larry

 

[pjtnascar]

Neat!

That's a pretty cool little repeater. I have a couple of ideas to tweak it. You could add a solar panel trickle charger to the set up.

Does this repeater offer an advantage over just using an HT connected to a magnet mount antenna? Maybe you can add a small amplifier to it lika Mirage BD 35. Of course, that little battery wouldn't work to power it for long, but a deep cycle marine battery would do it for a while.

Very cool idea, though.

 

[ShawnInPaso]

Great idea. I wonder if you soldered the cables yourself or bought them somewhere? I'm looking for similar cables but I'm terrible at soldering the connectors. I have checked 'cablexperts' but their shipping and handling fees cost more than the cables?

Good creativity with the portable repeater.

 

[WatnNY]

Kudos to you kpoe for having the thoughts, ingenuity and time to put it together!

Mike

 

[mpg0515]

Nice Work!

Dude, that is awesome work with what looks like little to average money put into the project! You'll have plently of isolation with that frequency split and low power for sure.... Does that controller (can't think of the name right now, I know its from Japan), does it have an "IDer" feature or can it be programmed to have one?

I saw your other repeater at home and that too was an excellent use of two relatively cheap mobile rigs!

Keep us updated with any changes you make and again nice job!

 

[cgold79]

Its awesome i love your ideals you have a sweet setup all together ther keep up the Awesome work!!!! Pro-197,Pro-2055,Pro-433,Pro-97,Pro-164,BCT8

 

[commscanaus]

Yep- the detractors can just bog right off.....I think it is awesome too!

I really like the concept, having an easy to deploy repeater like that to use when the need arises.

For all intents and purposes, the Wouxun radios should work just fine, coupled with the ability to remotely shut the device off.

Thanks for sharing the pictures, you have inspired me to get one of those repeater controller units and a duplexer. I have a couple of Saber radios sitting around doing nothing!

Regards, Commscanaus.

 

[mikewazowski]

A bit more bother but separate tx and rx antennas would negate the need for a duplexor and would also make it field reprogrammable without the need for a tracking generator.

If you've got the room to separate the antennas, then you could increase the size of the battery.

 

[Fast1eddie]

I like it but question the "Low" and "High" labels on the radios. I take it one is input and the other output???

 

[RadioDaze]

Very nice.

Just a suggestion... those SLA batteries need to be properly maintained from birth. Since you got it at a pawn shop, you have no idea whether somebody once tanked it or failed to keep it charged regularly. So you would be unsure of its runtime. Don't wait until you are depending on it before you find out how long it will run the equipment, and whether you need to replace it.