anyone built a cross band repeater from a M1225 and a GTX?

[davidg73]

I have a fire customer who is slowly converting from VHF to the county SMR system. They want a hard patch done between the old conventional channel and the new 800 talkgroup. The GTX is one of the older ones without the switches inside, but i wired up a 159 to the PA Enable line to provide a COR output to key the 1225. everything works GREAT with 1 minor problem. The VHF Master II repeater has PL on the squelch tail and the SMR system is programmed for Message trunking. so when EITHER unit dekeys they "hear" traffic and key the other unit. this results in ping-ponging back and forth.

anyone built a controller or know of a decent CHEAP bi-directional controller that i could use to set this up for them? it is a volunteer fire department and they won't spend a ton of money on this. They currently have the old/new stuff patched on the console, but due to personnell clashes they had to set it up at an unmanned console postion and therefore no one cna patch anything else to either old or new channel. therefore they want to setup this cross band repeater.

they also have a ACU-1000 but don't want to use it permanently for this as the command center is out of town alot for training and helping other departments.

[HLA]

a crossband repeater in that situation may sound like a good idea but if they are counting on that during a fire, somebody is going to get hurt. the cheapest way is going to be the best and safest way and that's just simply get everyone switched over asap. if it's a small voulenteer department then they won't need many radios to get everyone the correct radio. or just stay on their old vhf until they have all the new 800 gear.

[davidg73]

it is a county wide fire dept. over 120 men, PLUS mobiles and bases. total of around 200 units to totally swap.

i tried to tell them to either stay VHF or go 100% trunked, but they insist on swapping over 1 district at a time and since most every fire has 2 or more districts respond, they have to be able to talk on either radio and everyone hear it.

and yes, someone is going to get hurt. but this is what happens when eveyrone on a VFD is a "radio-man"

the main concern right now is hearing the dispatch paging, i finally got the Elite console to page both the conventional and Call alert the trunk radios with one button push, but some of them still want to hear the tones. right now the normal firemen all have VHF, only the upper guys have 800 radios. but the upper guys are the one's who decide how things are done!

[d119]

This kind of patch should be done through the console, not using outboard radios plugged into each other.

Set a patch up using BIM's in the console.

[davidg73]

long story short, i cannot setup the patch thru the console. been there, done that, and they are not happy with it. what they want is a totally seperate patch from teh consoles incase of console failure and to almost guarantee the patch stay active. a couple of dispatchers would get mad that they could not patch the fire over to the SO and they would go hit the COIM reset button and force drop teh patch. so the FD wants it seperate so the SO can still patch fire over if necessary. for some unknown reason they refuse to just simply patch it at one of the SO positions so the dispatchers can modify as necessary.

I will check back Monday to see if anyone knows of something. If nothing is available, then nothing is available. I am just a poor tech trying to keep a customer happy!

[/\/\y 2 cents]

I have an inexpensive way to do this which prevents the squelch tails on both repeater systems from "hearing themselves" and Ponging COR to PTT over and over again. I have done it for chiefhal3 on this board with what sounds like the same setup. You will need (2) SiteCAST boxes and (2) plug and play 16 pin cables or make your own cable with included pinout/schematic (very simple) http://www.criticalrf.com Once you have these on the Back of the M1225 and the GTX you will also be able to talk/listen over both systems from anywhere on earth via PC/MAC/PDA/EDA with 19.2 internet or greater.

Steve