• To anyone looking to acquire commercial radio programming software:

    Please do not make requests for copies of radio programming software which is sold (or was sold) by the manufacturer for any monetary value. All requests will be deleted and a forum infraction issued. Making a request such as this is attempting to engage in software piracy and this forum cannot be involved or associated with this activity. The same goes for any private transaction via Private Message. Even if you attempt to engage in this activity in PM's we will still enforce the forum rules. Your PM's are not private and the administration has the right to read them if there's a hint to criminal activity.

    If you are having trouble legally obtaining software please state so. We do not want any hurt feelings when your vague post is mistaken for a free request. It is YOUR responsibility to properly word your request.

    To obtain Motorola software see the Sticky in the Motorola forum.

    The various other vendors often permit their dealers to sell the software online (i.e., Kenwood). Please use Google or some other search engine to find a dealer that sells the software. Typically each series or individual radio requires its own software package. Often the Kenwood software is less than $100 so don't be a cheapskate; just purchase it.

    For M/A Com/Harris/GE, etc: there are two software packages that program all current and past radios. One package is for conventional programming and the other for trunked programming. The trunked package is in upwards of $2,500. The conventional package is more reasonable though is still several hundred dollars. The benefit is you do not need multiple versions for each radio (unlike Motorola).

    This is a large and very visible forum. We cannot jeopardize the ability to provide the RadioReference services by allowing this activity to occur. Please respect this.

Repeater question?

Status
Not open for further replies.

dustinw251

Member
Joined
Feb 23, 2010
Messages
83
Location
Franklinton, LA
Hope im not in the wrong forum guys but here goes. I know you cannot use 2 separate repeaters on the same RX and TX. But, in certain fire districts in our parish the transmission is very poor. Can I take and have a secondary repeater installed with a different recieve frequency and set it to transmit to the recieve frequency on the primary repeater. But yet still allowing the RX stay the same on the department radios. Several have said this cant be done because u cant use 2 separate repeaters together. or they may not be competent enough to give me a straight answer.
 

jaspence

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Mar 21, 2008
Messages
3,042
Location
Michigan
Repeaters

You can have numerous links to your repeater. Where I used to live, we had three receive towers. They were linked by an UHF system. The main tower talked and received using PL 94.8, the main link used a receive PL of 100 and relayed over the UHF to the transmitter sight. Since our assigned frequency was 147.000, we could use either plus or minus offset, so our second link received on 146.40 and use the UHF to connect to the transmitter. This does require the mobiles to have additional programming, but the system worked fine.
 

cabletech

Member
Joined
Apr 22, 2012
Messages
871
Location
Puget Sound
You can have numerous links to your repeater. Where I used to live, we had three receive towers. They were linked by an UHF system. The main tower talked and received using PL 94.8, the main link used a receive PL of 100 and relayed over the UHF to the transmitter sight. Since our assigned frequency was 147.000, we could use either plus or minus offset, so our second link received on 146.40 and use the UHF to connect to the transmitter. This does require the mobiles to have additional programming, but the system worked fine.


This is related to ham radio and just about any thing goes there.

In the commerical worls you have to be careful how you do things.

To the OP, depending on how far apart the two (three) repeaters are, yes, you can use the same frequency set up with differant input tones.

Tone one controls your main repeater and tone two controls the second etc.

When dispatch pages or talks to your people they should know that you are on tone two.


Another way is to set up a linked simlocast repeater system, but the thing with doing this is the area to be covered as you can not just set this up any where.
 

mmckenna

I ♥ Ø
Joined
Jul 27, 2005
Messages
23,617
Location
Hiding in a coffee shop.
Hope im not in the wrong forum guys but here goes. I know you cannot use 2 separate repeaters on the same RX and TX. But, in certain fire districts in our parish the transmission is very poor. Can I take and have a secondary repeater installed with a different recieve frequency and set it to transmit to the recieve frequency on the primary repeater. But yet still allowing the RX stay the same on the department radios. Several have said this cant be done because u cant use 2 separate repeaters together. or they may not be competent enough to give me a straight answer.

I may be missing it in your message, but if you can describe the coverage issue, that would help:
Is the issue that the repeater is not hearing the mobiles/handhelds or are the mobiles/handhelds not hearing the repeater?

If the repeater cannot hear the mobiles/handhelds, then you may need to try setting up more receivers and linking them back by either RF or telco lines to a receive voter. This voter will listen to all the receivers and pick the best signal and feed it to the repeater transmitter. Another option would be to look at your receive antenna, or the rest of the components to make sure they are working and set up properly.

If the mobiles/handhelds can't hear the repeater output, then you might want to check into a single channel simulcast system. This will be expensive and requires an experienced tech to set it up.

Getting a knowledgeable tech involved would be a good idea. It takes someone with the test equipment and experience to do correctly.
 

zz0468

QRT
Banned
Joined
Feb 6, 2007
Messages
6,034
Hope im not in the wrong forum guys but here goes. I know you cannot use 2 separate repeaters on the same RX and TX.

Sure you can. I see it done all the time. So long as users understand the system, particularly it's drawbacks, it can be exactly what's needed.

But, in certain fire districts in our parish the transmission is very poor. Can I take and have a secondary repeater installed with a different recieve frequency and set it to transmit to the recieve frequency on the primary repeater. But yet still allowing the RX stay the same on the department radios.

Yes. This can be done, but it's not how I would do it.

You can put up multiple repeaters, on the same input and output pair. Use a different PL tone for repeater access, but transmit the same tone on each repeater transmitter so the mobiles will hear any of them. Change PL tones on the mobiles or control stations to access different repeaters.

This technique works very well, and is widely deployed by CalFire and USFS here in California.

Several have said this cant be done because u cant use 2 separate repeaters together. or they may not be competent enough to give me a straight answer.

To be sure, there are drawbacks. If you want to go cheap, the technique above works well within it's limitations. If you want to tie the repeaters together, then there is several additional layers of expense and complexity involved. But it CAN be done, and can be made to work extremely well.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top