The 8400 is still two mobiles in a box and the Quantar is a much better, higher power, higher duty cycle repeater for about the same price.
I'll be perfectly honest, I may still go the 2x CDM1250 route just to get my feet wet.
Note that except for very expensive auctions of large bandwidth, no one buys or owns a frequency. The FCC does not sell or lease frequencies. One can be licensed for it but it will be shared by other licensed users. In some cases, there is coordination required or possible to help in select a frequency where there will not be too much conflict.
I probably used the wrong words, I did mean to "lease" the frequency, entitling the user(s) to privacy tones and allowing for digital transmission and ADP.
"Leasing" a frequency would assume that someone "owns" the frequency. In the VHF (150-174 MHz) and UHF (450-512 MHz) bands covered by Part 90, nobody, to the best of my knowledge, owns a frequency. The frequencies are a shared resource. If you attempt to apply for a Part 90 license, the FCC will probably direct you to a frequency coordinator who will charge you a lot of money, find a frequency or frequencies for you to use, they may suggest a "privacy tone", and they may suggest a digital voice or data mode. Once you have the coordination, then the FCC will consider granting you a license. The license will specify the frequency or frequencies, the bandwidth, and the emission designator which will depend on the digital voice or data mode. However, the FCC will make no guarantees that you will have exclusive use of a "private" frequency.
Not to mention, despite the linked repeater pigs occupying all 8 pairs in many areas, the rules as written require all users to share- meaning your repeater has just as much precedence to exist as mine. When you are using yours, I have to abstain and vice versa. I know, hard to do when ham radio style IP linking is used and local users have no way of practically knowing a given frequency far far away is being utilized by someone else.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the polite thing to do would be to scan the "empty" frequencies that don't have a repeater published (doesn't mean there isn't one there or folks using Simplex) and scan them for a week to try to gauge activity as to not step on folks who may have been there first.
One way to find a lesser used frequency is program them all in a scanner then let it run for a week locking out the busiest channels. You will be left with the least used channels. I have a scanner around here somewhere with a PL decoder that I would leave on a frequency and it will log all hits with what tone/DPL is used and the duration for each tone/DPL. It then dumps that onto your computer for easy comparison.
That's not a bad idea either! I have a UNIDEN Bearcat BCD996P2 next to me with a lot of my local area programmed in, so I could certainly do that. From the easier to read manual, it should be able to do CTCSS/DCS/NAC tone decoding: Easier to Read BCD996P2/XT Digital Scanner Manual. I would just program in all of the GMRS frequencies and then lockout what hits and note the tone, correct?
What I do is let the scanner run for about a week and make notes on what channels are busy at first. Then after a few days lock out the worst offenders and keep doing that until you have one or two channels left that are hopefully quiet. You don't want to lock anything out right away because some channels might only be busy on weekends, some only during morning and evening travel times and so on. When you finally pick your target frequency you can then monitor what tones or DPLs might be used so you'll be able to make a good choice on the tone/DPL you will use.
Did you know that repeater operation is not allowed on the 12.5 kHz interstitial channels?
Your choices for repeater pairs are:
R&U, I will get started on this today. I just picked up my downstream gear after some great deliberation, I decided I wanted quality gear and an upgrade from my HT1550's and XTS2500. I'm also a pretty big fan of buy once, cry once. I know Moto gear is built to last and it's what I have the most experience with, albeit that was when the HT1250/CDM1250 were kind in the Fire/EMS world.
I do now, thank you for that clarification
Understood, I will focus on those so it would be 462.725 TX and 467.725 RX? or 462.700 TX and 462.725 RX (is that what you mean by pair?) I had read somewhere that split tone could help reduce interference, if that's inaccurate, I will surely adjust the plan. I'm very much learning as I go and appreciate all of this invaluable feedback.
I understand the repeater pairs more now, I don't know how I missed that and feel kind of silly for asking the question I did..
You would use a 5MHz split pair such as 462.725 and 467.725. The repeater would transmit at 462.725 to your radios and your radios would transmit at 467.725 to the repeater. I don't think its legal to use a mismatched pair. Many years ago people would use split tone to make it harder for someone to find the input tone of the repeater and use or jam it. With modern radios and their tone scan function you will make it harder by a few seconds, so no need to run split tone.
Roger, I actually hit the search box a bit harder and found the same answer (RTFM, what a concept), I appreciate you validating the information that I found as well. That's good to know about split toning and how it's been made essentially obsolete. That will certainly make programming easier.
Be careful about learing stuff from some random ham club web site.
That makes a lot of sense, I also pay for a subscription to RR, should probably take advantage of all the features (free and otherwise).Be careful about learing stuff from some random ham club web site.
A lot of what you need to know can be found in the government web site links at the top of this wiki article.
FRS/GMRS combined channel chart - The RadioReference Wiki
wiki.radioreference.com
