So many Repeater Questions. .

Business Radios
1

Thank you for stopping by, and for taking the time to ponder my questions.

I’m running communication for a small business and we used a cheap handheld radio for quite a while with no issues.
We’ve recently built up, and decided to purchase some additional radios and a Hytera RD982u-1 repeater. I’m extremely happy with the results, but now a year later I have split one department, and a third wants to be able to use the handheld solution.
It seems the more I learn, the more confusing the answers become, and my research appears to be conflicting with my dealers suggestions.

  1. I will be going digital with my new inventory, and I read that the Hytera RD982U is advertised as being a “dual mode” system Example
    Does that mean that I can continue to use my analog radios on one frequency pair while using digital radios on another frequency pair simultaneously?

  2. How many frequency pairs does the RD982U-1 support? Can I use this one repeater to support three frequency pairs? Will I need separate antennae and duplexers for each pair?

  3. While modifying our license for digital and more frequency pairs, isn’t it ONLY the Transmitting frequency of the repeater that would need to be modified?

Again, Thank you for your time, and please understand if your answers spawn more questions.

2

Dual mode typically refers to the repeater being able to handle analog and digital communications on the same channel (not at the exact same time). To work correctly, it typically requires radios to be programmed for busy channel lockout on the analog side and polite access restrictions on the digital side so analog won’t talk over an active digital call and vise versa. It all happens on the same channel.

Most repeaters will typically support 1 to 16 channels. The duplexer issues does pretty much lock a repeater down to a single pair (though there are some exceptions in some repeater setups).

To modify the license you will need to modify the transmitting frequency for the repeater (FB2,FB6, FB8, etc) and the transmit frequency for the portables (MO’s) and bases (FB, FXB) which just so happens to be the receive frequency of the repeater.