Some neighbors have set up a GMRS radio network in our area, and 30+ of us have radios, licenses, and participate in a periodic “net” to make sure everyone knows how to use the radios in event of a disaster. They put in a repeater at a carefully-selected location so that folks on both sides of a major ridgeline could communicate with each other. Our neighborhood association president was able to coordinate folks to help those in need following Hurricane Lala. It worked almost perfectly until this past week, when suddenly my radios stopped receiving the signal from the repeater. I could still communicate directly with everyone on my side of the ridge, I just couldn’t use the repeater. Both my radios acted the same, so my first thought was that it was a problem with the repeater.
Repeater Guy, who built and hosts the repeater, did a thorough check, updated the firmware, and generally pronounced the repeater healthy. Suspicion turned to my radios, but I had two of them and hadn’t changed any of their programming. The problem occurred whether I was on my quarter-wave vertical antenna or just using the radio’s included whip antenna. I drove down toward Repeater Guy’s location, and when I got close things started working again. But it just doesn’t seem like a signal strength problem, in that I just get dead air when I’m monitoring, even with squelch disabled. I don’t hear a peep through the static. And it worked so incredibly well the weeks before.
It occurred to me that I had very little idea what I was doing when I configured the radios. I had had them a week, and my previous radio experience was many decades back. Maybe I’d made some silly configuration mistake that lay dormant until a firmware update on the repeater uncovered it. So Repeater Guy sent me the actual files he used to program everybody else’s radios. I used it to configure my radios. No change. I factory reset my radios and configured them again. Same exact symptoms. Finally, Repeater Guy brought the radios he’s been using for testing to the compound and suddenly they, too, showed the same problem. Mind you, neighbors across the street and next door aren’t having the same issues. I was both frustrated and relieved that Repeater Guy’s radios behaved the same as mine. So it probably isn’t some silly thing I did, but what is the problem? I loaned Repeater Guy my vSWR meter so he can test the repeater’s antenna. I’m also going to get a field strength meter and he can compare the strength of the signal from the repeater with that of his base station radio.
But how strange this is!
—2p