I am trying (unsuccessfully) to set up a repeater with the Gam3Gear Surecom SR-628. I have done everyting I can to get it to work properly, but here is the result EVERY TIME. After setting up each of my repeater radios (A&B) with proper frequencies and offsets, I get it to work fine in my home, but distance is the MAJOR issue. I can walk around my house and test with my two handhelds (1&2), and it works perfectly. But as soon as I seperate radios 1 and 2 from the repeater by more than a couple of city blocks, it does not work. Then to make it more puzzling, when I unplug “A” radio (repeater RX radio) I can hear radios 1 or 2 fine from more than 4 miles away. But as soon as I plug radio A back into the Gam3Gear Surecom SR-628, I get nothing (actually, the green light on radio A comes on then back off real quick). So, here is what I have tried:
Adjusting volume levels on all radios, especially A and B.
Seperated A and B radio antennas by 25’.
Experemented every way possible with VOX on A and B.
Best guess? Desense. What is your frequency split? This is critical. Are the two hand-helds in the same band? I’m guessing they are. Hand-held radios have pretty terrible rejection of off-frequency signals, so although these repeater devices work great between VHF and UHF, for example - in a single band system, every time one goes into transmit, the receiver in the other gets made ‘deaf’ and distance drops dramatically. Proper repeaters have better filtering, and usually external filters to notch out the offending frequencies, giving the recievers a cleaner signal.
Decent kit, usually bigger sized, and more expensive has better filtering, and using a split of more than 6 or 7MHz can bring down the desensitisation to a workable level. One of my business repeaters covers just a small area - a small town, and with two separate antennas still suffers a little from desense, but it runs low power and is functional for it’s purpose. Adding cavity filtering increased the effective range quite a bit, but as all users are local, I removed them for a different project. Your system just has the worst possible spec - poor receivers, and probably a very narrow offset between tx and rx.
Thank you very much. I absolutely understand your thinking/opinion here. It is just interesting that there is no feedback or complaints online about the lack of distance for this set up. I think I will need to think through a more pricey approach. Thank you again.
The controller is very simple, so has very little to do with anything other than switching one of the radios into repeat. The lack of distance has nothing to do with the controller, so you won’t find problems or help targeted at it. Googling the Gam3Gear product won’t reveal much at all. Are you trying in band, or out - that is the critical issue for success? If you are willing to open up the radios, you can get a much better system by simply using a squelch open tap (one that goes up to 5V or power supply rail when the squelch activates - then use this to trigger transmit on the other unit with a small logic circuit.
So - can you confirm the problem is with cross band use (when there could be a solution) or in band, where with less selective radios, there really may not be without adding filters.
I recently put up a 45 foot repeater tower with 2 antennas that are separated both vertically and horizonally at least 15feet. It sits on the highest plateau. Using the surecom 328 and a UV5R on the RX and UV82HP on the TX. In the 134mhrtz band with a full 5htz spread. The radios work OK… inbound and outbound but only short range… less than 1000 yards. The surecom has terrible directions… do I need to activate VOX on any of the radios, adjust squelch… ??? what ? Thanks