Homemade GMRS SHTF Repeater - Two Wouxun KG-1000G GMRS Radios - How Far Can It Transmit?

the name is princess not a rubicon sparkle pony nice to meet you my friend the time has come the time you've all been waiting for it's all accumulated to this very moment seeing the fruits of my addiction so i can finally be cured i won't have to buy any more radio equipment the repeater is now online i'm going to show it to you i'll go over the final costs show you how it works and talk about some of the issues well there are issues but first allow me to digress as with the previous parts one two and two and a half of this video series you can watch the last part right there i've been going over the comments a lot of people have left helpful comments actually helpful helpful not hurtful it's a nice change and if you've been going through the comments you may have noticed on some of the commenters they've got these little round colorful icons next to their names and you may have wondered how do i get a colorful icon next to my name well those are the people that have clicked the join button and joined the channel to help support the channel me my addiction the best part about joining is that they now have the ability they're allowed to say and comment whatever they want they have bought their way into my heart they can say whatever they want most of them have been pretty nice so far the best perk about joining becoming a member of the channel and yet there are the others who left comments as i mentioned many helpful suggestions and comments that were very helpful to me thank you again thank you for those comments but there are those there's some i won't say who they keep saying it won't work that antenna won't work yet coax won't work you need solid core gold plated unobtanium coax those duplexers are never gonna work they're trying to over complicate it i'm not trying to talk to mars here i'm trying to get a coverage area of my neighborhood a little bit more than my neighborhood where i live because i'm at the top of the hill and there's a valley underneath me for miles i want to try to get 30 miles in three directions shouldn't be that difficult turning out to be difficult we'll talk about that but i don't need a 3 000 repeater setup and a 500 antenna on the roof i'm not trying to build a club's repeater that's going to sit on a mountain top i just people i just want an inexpensive little repeater why why do they have to complicate it so one of the big issues that a lot of people kept mentioning was the duty cycle the duty cycle they said duty and i think i mentioned this in the previous video but ocean says the duty cycle that these radios can run 24 7 as long as they're kept cool i'm not saying that i necessarily trust what ocean says i'm just saying what they're saying so we will see many commenters said oh you can just go buy a repeater for more than what you're paying for those ocean radios okay so the costs i've got my notes here so the cost just for the repeater part itself the two ocean radios the power supply that's it just for that part meaning all the other stuff we'll talk about that but all those other things you'd have to buy if you bought one of those off-the-shelf repeaters so the ocean radios are 320 a piece so that's six hundred and forty dollars the power supply was a hundred and fifty dollars so that's seven hundred ninety dollars for effectively a 50 watt repeater i'm not sure that you can find another repeater anywhere on the market as many commenters said for less than 790 if you can i'd like to see it leave a link oh you don't have a link now the other stuff you'd have to buy anyway whether you bought an off-the-shelf repeater or built one with the two radios you need antenna in my case i got the tram 1486 that was 80. the xlt duplexer is 150 you don't even need to do that you could just use two antennas but then you're gonna need longer coax and then you know an antenna is another 80 bucks or so it you may not even save any money you do need coax and as mentioned as was pointed out by the viewers and as i learned the higher quality coax you do definitely want the highest quality you can get i got the lmr 400. there were comments saying lmr 400 won't work in a repeater seems to be working fine for me lmr400 uh going to cost around 150 depending on how long you need it maybe more may or be less so the total amount is roughly eleven hundred and seventy dollars that doesn't count every little connector and patch cord that doesn't add up to very much so the cost for the repeater 790 dollars cost for everything together antenna and everything the whole ball of gum 1170 can you find that whole package cheaper somewhere else a lot of you said i could again i'm waiting for those links i hear a lot of this i see a lot of this but i don't see any actual okay so let's go down to the garage i'm gonna go on a field trip remember how fun field trips were in the third grade take a field trip down to the garage and i'm gonna show it to you [Music] don't you hate when youtubers do stuff like that they cut down to the somewhere different like if it's oh my gosh he cut he did a cut he oh my god so i've got my two ocean kg1000gs this is the one that transmits this is the one that receives i've got my duplexer here power supply here i've got a little uh wireless thermometer so i can keep an eye on the temperature this is the cable that runs between the two radios it's like 20 feet long both radios are wired into the power supply and on the duplexer i've got the antenna in that's my lm r400 coax going up to the antenna and then i've got two patch cables these are rg 213 these are lower grade patch cables but they're only 18 inches long so i get less loss there and one goes to each radio got the receive here 467 600 which goes to my receiver transmit goes to 462 600. so let's power it up and see what happens i've had it powered up it's been up for days so i know it works but show you here so i've got single switch to turn it on ah she sounds nice and when there's two of them singing together oh first of all just a quick recap on how difficult this was to set up this was super easy it took me a long time because a lot of parts were back ordered i ordered the wrong power supply i'm still using a loaner duplexer first loaner duplexer had an issue all of this could be set up and configured in an hour the thing that takes a long time is of course running the antenna mounting the antenna outside and that's still an ongoing saga but as far as configuring all this it was one or two menu options on each radio and then plugging them into each other super simple see the previous video part two and a half on the actual configuration steps it's super easy now i don't have the microphone connected because i don't need it when it's running i just leave it here been running for days now if i need to make a program change i can do most of it through the menu but it's just easiest to hook up the uh microphone plug it in don't have to turn it off or anything i can just plug it right in i just plug it right in and start using it unplug it when i'm done i don't leave it plugged in because based on suggestions from viewers anything plugged into the radio can can pick up static especially when i'm transmitting so i keep it unplugged just to keep the rf noise down i haven't noticed the difference but once you've got it programmed you know once i got it all dialed in i didn't i don't really need this now anyway so i just keep it disconnected so the way it works is the receive unit is always listening on the repeater receive frequency so when somebody goes to gmrs channel 25 or repeater channel number three automatically their radio is going to transmit at four six seven six hundred so when they key up this radio will hear it and at the same time this radio from the connection will start transmitting at four six two six hundred which is also the same as simplex gmrs channel 17 but on a gmrs radio you just put your radio on on repeater channel 3 or gmrs channel 25 it's different on all radios and it takes care of all that for you that's the offset if you read about offsets on repeaters plus five or minus five megahertz that's what that is the offset is the difference between the receive and the transmit in gmrs you don't have to worry about it it's a non-thing other than knowing those numbers for when you program these radios because i had to dial in those two frequencies so i happen to have here a handheld already set on my gmrs channel 25 or repeater channel 3. i'm going to walk away a few feet and key up using this and you'll see what happens and i will be transmitting but it's low power it won't go too far check one two one two [Applause] so you could see that the repeater they both lit up uh the receiver was receiving the transmitter was transmitting and you may have heard the fans kick in i've got it set so the fans will turn on as soon as there's any activity and that is it it's really very simple i could pack this all up and take it with me somewhere if i wanted to i could replace the power supply with a car battery and i could replace the big rooftop antenna with a smaller antenna and use this same duplexer this type duplexer are actually made for mobile installation so it's made to go into a car so i could drive up to the top of the hill and use it it's almost portable i could easily mount everything into a box and make it portable so now that you've seen what you came here for let's go back into the studio and talk more about some of the issues oh and we're back again oh the youtubers so cool we don't do that here we do not waste your time i do not waste your time is too valuable so how well does it work it works pretty well there are some issues though my goal was to have roughly 30 miles coverage in three directions i don't care about what's behind me because there's a mountain range behind me i'm at the top of a hill i'm at almost 2000 feet elevation foothills i'm on the foothills and then there's a huge valley with mountains pretty much surrounding me so i'm transmitting to a big bowl if you just want to build a repeater for your around your farm or that you can drag out with you when you go camping or whatever to cover the mountain ranges around you be wary of all the people that you'll see leaving comments on youtube videos saying it won't work you can't do it some people just don't seem to get it through their socially maladjusted brains that we may not need to talk to mars we just may want to cover a small area so this will do the job it depends on your terrain and some obvious factors just be wary of all the naysayers so in my testing so far the repeater's only been up for a couple of days i've had it in medium or low power most of the time the antenna is not oh the antenna this antenna has been a nightmare it's not in its final resting place i thought i had a good spot for it but when i started doing my testing it's really it's got some major dead zones because of the house is blocking it and all the other houses on the block on the some of the periphery edges and directions but even with those issues so some of the test results i've got so far so as you may know i'm in the inland empire of southern california around ontario airport if you know southern california i'm near ontario port i'm up above it you can see the planes landing several miles below us but that's the general area got a report of somebody driving on the 91 freeway in chino and according to google earth that was 20 miles another one last night at the 57 freeway and lambert that's way down in orange county uh 25 miles away and the best so far lake matthews down interstate 15 nichols road nichols nicholas road 31 miles so for all of you that said it won't work it works so there are those massive holes in coverage like i said because i thought i had a good location with the antenna but then when i put it up there and then look and then go out and measure where my signal is it's not going to work so i am going to have to put it back to my original location on top of the roof that's like this on the chimney so i'm going to work out all the kinks make sure everything's working and then the last thing i'll do is have that antenna mounted up there because once it goes up there i'm not touching it again so that'll be it and that's going to be 30 to 40 feet higher above ground level than it currently is with no obstructions it should perform much better heat as i was concerned about is an issue so those radios they get hot and the power supply is like a little space heater it's not it doesn't they don't get hot to the touch but that heat builds up in that small cabinet so if i keep the doors open it's not much of an issue everything works fine but if i keep the doors closed it's getting too hot it hasn't got above like 86 degrees and that was on a hot day it was 95 degrees outside i'm gonna either have to keep those cabinet doors open all the time which i don't want to do because it i'm not a savage or i'll uh put another hole i don't know if you noticed when we were down there there was a hole where the cables were coming through that goes straight through that hole is under the house and the crawl space is very cool up in there i'll bore another hole and put a fan in there to circulate the air or something that should take care of it or worst case if i get lazy i'll just leave the cabinet doors open one thing to be wary of this thing when it's transmitting on high kills my wifi my my wi-fi box my main one is very near the antenna where it is now i transmit on high power cuts off the wi-fi can hear my kid yelling from across the house so i'm i know that once i move the antenna up onto the roof that will not be an issue but if you install a repeater of your own or just a base station that transmits 50 watts your kids start screaming about the internet going down that's why this thing was really easy to put together less than an hour you can put everything together running the cable for the antenna mounting antenna obviously that takes longer super simple and according to my calculations fairly inexpensive now this is not the end of it i still need to install the ideomatic so i'll be ordering that i'm waiting for by2arradios.com to get a shipment of their interface cable that plugs the ocean kg 1000gs into the ideomatic that will automatically send out a id my license number on the repeater so that people listening that aren't aware of the repeater they'll hear it they'll get id'd they'll know where to go to get information about it so they can use it because again i'm a pillar of my community that's why i built this whole thing so that everybody in the area can use this repeater sponsored by by twowayradios.com i also want to test the jeffrey 1000 solar generator with it just to get an idea of how long it lasts in the real world but i want to wait till more people are using it because if i hook that thing up to it now it would last forever because nobody's using it because it doesn't really suck up much power until somebody's talking on it so i'll do that in a couple of weeks and then of course there will be the antenna saga getting that mounted so i'll give another update once i get that done and then more range tests and final results but for now it works it's working well if you have questions if i left anything out leave a comment below if you have suggestions something that i missed or got wrong leave a comment below let me know [ __ ] comments hurtful comments will be pinned to the top for everyone to enjoy or i'll just delete them unless you join if you have one of those little icons next to your name go ahead man you bought me and say whatever you want i can take it thank you for watching we hope to see you

Channel: NotaRubicon Productions

Views: 41,719

Keywords: gmrs repeater, wouxun repeater, homemade repeater, repeater for SHTF, how to build a gmrs repeater

Id: ouVYpwWwlw4

Length: 17min 3sec (1023 seconds)

Published: Fri May 07 2021