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Anyone have one of the DIY GMRS Repeaters up & running?

62Truck

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They claim most of the loss is in the small duplexer, not so much the cable. I never heard of coax being "full duplex" specific?
Yes most of your loss will be in the duplexer.

Use of LMR-400 in Repeater installations is not recommended. The braid over foil construction of the shield, is made up from different metals. This dissimilar metal construction has been traced to sources of Passive Intermodulation when used in a repeater, or full-duplex operation when two (or more) signals of different frequency are present in the line, such as the received (inbound) repeater signal and the transmitted (outbound) repeater signal.

You can use LMR-400 for jumpers on a duplexer that is fine. You just don't want to use it from the duplexer to the antenna. You're going to want to use something like Superflex or Heliax.
 

vagrant

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It's only fair. After all, "when all else fails…"
I personally wouldn't have a problem with that, but man oh man...everything would have had to fail...and other neighboring public systems would have also failed. It would literally be to the point when all else fails before they'd ask to use our stuff, but our stuff would be a Quantar....that they gave us...that resides in their old communication shack...on their rack...using their antenna and back up generator. A quick tune on the duplexer plus edit the CPS and they'd be back up.
 

mmckenna

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I personally wouldn't have a problem with that, but man oh man...everything would have had to fail...and other neighboring public systems would have also failed. It would literally be to the point when all else fails before they'd ask to use our stuff, but our stuff would be a Quantar....that they gave us...that resides in their old communication shack...on their rack...using their antenna and back up generator. A quick tune on the duplexer plus edit the CPS and they'd be back up.

Yeah, we've got multiple levels of backup, plus tons of simplex frequencies, HF gear, and satellite radios/phones.
30-40 years ago the "when all else fails" made some sense, but in most of the country that's not the case anymore.

Instead of ARRL focusing on the "when all else fails" thing, it would be nice if they did some articles on modern public safety radio systems and the resources that are available to those agencies. Amateur radio can still assist, but focusing their efforts in an area where help is actually needed would make more sense.
 

prcguy

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Yeah, we've got multiple levels of backup, plus tons of simplex frequencies, HF gear, and satellite radios/phones.
30-40 years ago the "when all else fails" made some sense, but in most of the country that's not the case anymore.

Instead of ARRL focusing on the "when all else fails" thing, it would be nice if they did some articles on modern public safety radio systems and the resources that are available to those agencies. Amateur radio can still assist, but focusing their efforts in an area where help is actually needed would make more sense.
Yup, there is no place for self deployed whackers and it would be nice if public service could make good use of amateurs willing to donate time and equipment during emergencies and training for such events. Whatever the heck that would look like.
 

mmckenna

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Yup, there is no place for self deployed whackers and it would be nice if public service could make good use of amateurs willing to donate time and equipment during emergencies and training for such events. Whatever the heck that would look like.
This was specifically mentioned at one of the IWCE talks. A number of SWIC's were talking about the usefulness of amateur radio. The guy from New Mexico said that out of the entire state, there were 17 hams that had actually gone through the process and checks to work with their office of emergency services. 17 isn't enough to do much, not in a state the size of New Mexico
.
They then specifically talked about what they actually wanted hams to do: help disseminate information to the public in emergencies. They specifically talked about when a large fire took out cellular service in an area and they had a hard time getting those in the path of the advancing fire warned in time. 17 hams isn't enough.

DHS did say that they were working with ARRL to help bring them into the system and help ham play a useful role in emergencies.
 

vagrant

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DHS did say that they were working with ARRL to help bring them into the system and help ham play a useful role in emergencies.
It would be best to utilize amateur volunteers to pass traffic for/to whomever is affected. Such as Billy, Mary and the children are okay, or whatnot to their relatives/loved ones. Perhaps setup that location "away" from where the professionals are doing their jobs of staging/coordinating and whatever. Still, everything else must have failed if amateurs are needed to do even that. It does happen though.

Anyways...so I found out a buddy has one of those Retivis repeaters. He initially had his GMRS license and uses the repeater for his family as his two children are now pre-teen. He uses it when camping so his children can have some freedom and whatever benefits parents can have without children under their feet...or something to that affect.

( I feel like someone is staring at us. Intensely staring at our off topic posts. )
 
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