UHF crossband mobile repeater

[Robert Looper]

I am a shift sommander with a small Fire District in Missouri, near Kansas City. We have a VHF system with a 100 watt repeater for our dispatch. We cover 84sq. miles, lots of rural area with hills. We have several dead spots that none of our portables (all Motorola HT1000 or HT1250) will hit the repeater from. The Sheriff's dispatch transmits on five watts from 15 miles away to the repeater and has no talk-around capability. Bottom line, we're SOL in these areas. Our Chief is a Motorola only man (me too) and will only buy new equipment.
I am writing a proposal for new radio equipment and would like to know if Motorola has any new UHF crossband repeaters compatable with either CDM1550 or even a PM1500? Would we be better off with a new Pyramid or is there something else I don't know about? Also, with the repeater would we need a filter/duplexer in the vehicle? Also, what about in-band repeaters? That would save us from keeping a second handheld in the vehicles. Thanks for any input, Robert.

[Jay G.]

i use pyramids with excellent results! They work very well.

[W8RW]

Does your repeater have a single receiver at the transmit site or multiple receivers?

I suggest you also consider adding a voting system and receivers to the repeater. Do a tradeoff study between this and buying the vehicular repeaters and extra handhelds including cost, ease of use, performance, and maintainability. Remote receivers not only fill in dead spots, but they help with multipath fading in places where receiver coverage overlaps.