My Experience With The BTech GMRS-RPT50 / Overview and Review Of BTech's New 50-Watt GMRS Repeater 

Right off the bat calling your viewers dumb...

Federal Amplitude Governance Service LMAO!

Thanks for washing my car. Looks great!! 😂

The ending really got me a little choked up. Poor roger beepless, jiggly-knobed little thing never stood a chance in this world I guess.

Honestly a solid review. No punches pulled, no egos stroked, but giving credit where it is due.

This video sums up my experience with BTECH. Purchased three radios from them so far this year and returned two of them within days due to out-of-box failures. One hardware related, the other a firmware issue. The third radio has not been used much, so I am suspicious of it. But every time I contacted them they responded immediately and provided options, included for simple programming questions. Outstanding customer service. If only they could get their quality straightened out I might go back to them, but have decided to avoid them until I hear about things improving.

Sounds about like what I would expect from a B-Tech product. Thank you Randy, for this informative video!

Being a pillar of my community by repeater installation is on my list of to-do’s. I’m not going to wash my wife’s boyfriend’s vehicle to do it though. I’ve got standards.

You are very entertaining. Also funny. Thanks for making videos. Love you man.

Just got my repeater back form repair it's been in service for 24hr and is working well so far

This is still my favorite channel. I luv digesting it

My repeater is a dual KG-1000 Plus with an external duplexer and I was excited to see a real dedicated GMRS only packaged repeater. Sad that it is garbage, but they have nice and responsive garbage disposal team to clean up the mess.

Thank you! Always great to hear a real review.

Have to scratch that one off my wish list. Good job Randy!

Great story... and they all lived happily ever after....

Awesome review. Can’t wait for a follow up review and field test.

Another great review. You really had to labor through this one! A lot of time, too. Thank you for your time and effort.

Great review. I been waiting on someone to review this repeater. It sucks it was a dud out of the box. Quality is demanded in a repeater. It was nice to hear that even after the duplexer power output was supposed to be 45-50 watts and not reduced to 50% like most repeater duplexers. For $1,000 I don't know if I would want to trust a BTECH repeater.

Excellent video Thank you for your realness

Sounds like the Quality & Support Folks at Btech, while responsive, need to step-up their game on 'proofing their product', before it ships. Just the same, it's nice to see more product like this specifically geared for GMRS. Nice review Randy.

Thank you! Happy to help get you some new pencils ... 😅 ... Good job introducing this repeater.

LOVE your shirt. I shall get one👍

Thank you!

I ordered a 50W BTech ham mobile, and it was missing a cable, so I emailed support. In my experience, BTech support is excellent. They sent out my cable immediately. I also like the radio. However this repeater seems like junk. Not worth $1500. Hopefully they will improve it.

Thank you!!

Love the shirt...

Great vid as always Randy, A few of us gmrs users here in our town want to set up a repeater system, this helps us with more info on what not to just rush out and get, but like most electronics, first versions sold, like say game consoles, radios etc, are usually and unfortunately plagued with some type of problem. like a software / firmware glitch, overheating and causing a hardware failure, cold solder joints ( seen way to many brand new cb radios over the years where a factory solder joint was the issue ) .or just something that was not clearly checked with qc dept, before being released for sale, and needs either a firmware update, or sent back to fix said hardware failure, like in your case the duplexer failed. my guess and just a guess. is the duplexer transistors got overheated and failed due lack of a proper cooling design in the unit. since the repeater is alway on either in standby listening for a signal to relay, and or transmitting said signal out

Little guy is on it today. Get us ready for the weekend....

6:20 Nobody talking about the video files on Randy's computer 🤣🤣

This channel is lit!

The best story!

Oof that’s rough. Thanks for the video as always.

Love this guy

Bad experience, but excellent support. Nice to see them standing behind their product.

You keep talking about haters. I'm not seein it! Great video!

I still want one. Maybe the price will drop a little as they get the kinks worked out.

This is great news now if it actually squirts out 50 watt rf laxer beams for max fars is yet to be revealed by Randy. Crossing fingers

$1499 monies is gonna cut into my onlyfans budget...... decisions and sacrifices must be made.

Glad you got your money back, instead of waiting for repairs. I'd imagine, it would have been successive problems after that. Maybe in a couple of years they will get the bugs out of it and be reliable.

What are you using for the squelch setting for your Vertex standard. I have one as well and am using the commercial settings which is killing weak or distant transmissions. Not the manual settings.. Just trying to get this thing working as it should.

Heck yeah. GET YO MONEY BACK, JACK!🤑🤑🤑🤑🤑🤑🤑🤑🤑

Cool story bro.

i got one so far after firmware update been running fine one week into it

That ending was both anticlimactic and beautiful at the same time 😂

Here for the knowledge. Stay for the video file lists on the PC 😂

You, Sir, are hilarious !!!

Looks promising, but several missing future functions and issues you identified and encountered. Hope to see a more refined Version 2.

DADDY IS ON THE SCREEN

Hey, I was born in 1962,.. scary shit, Randy

‘Nough said. It’s so saddening to get a new device and have it fail so soon. But, good customer support makes me feel so much better.

Give the Yaesu fusion DXR2 a shot. I think you'll like it.

Will it Work on SP or EP with my Betamax? SP in conjunction with EP make for a long night.

Good to know, for sure. Least they were helpful about it. What sort of recommendations do you have for putting together a repeater rig in this power range?

I had high hopes for this unit, especially costing this much, but it seems with time, they'll work out all the bugs, and it will live up to its calling.

When will you evaluate Baofeng GM21 ? I bet it will be your new new new favorite

If there's ever a next time, try some heat applied to the screws. (via a soldering iron or gun) If they used (Chinese) loctite, a little heat might help break the screws free.

I have used Icom, Yeasu, and Btech customer service. Btech has been the best, most responsive service in the amateur radio industry. Sorry you were not able to get a working unit.

The question i cant get answered is can i connect it to a node. Does it have a cos connection

Since there is no roger beep on this repeater, then that means I have to trust the roger beep on my UV-5R or do I have to beep twice. I ask merely for information.

interesting device. I guess if you have some kind of club or enough friends who want to use the repeater it would be worth hosting. What do you get out of it for hosting the repeater? Just being nice?

Welp, so that's that for now. Hopefully they get the issues worked out on it and it turns into a solid device. Glad to know their support is excellent though.

6:19 LMAO.

If it was Mil Spec, it would have a 101% duty cycle for leap year.

Having been involved with setting up ham repeaters, that price is actually quite reasonable. And being a single unit, set up is probably quite reasonable as well.

Just a quick question,, does GMRS have to go through the frequency coordinator and they tell you what channels you can use on your repeaters ?

Randy, our GMRS Btech RPT50 experiences were nearly identical. Using Windows 10, I could not use the Btech software or the firmware. After manual programming, the Morse code identification would work only one or two times no matter what time interval was programmed. Lastly, on high power, it only broadcasted at 14.5 watts. Paypal will issue a 100% refund after the repeater is received by Btech in South Dakota. The cost to ship the RPT50 back with a shipping business this morning, via UPS was $139.30! I'm looking for a replacement rock solid GMRS repeater in this price range... any recommendations? Can true happiness be found with a Vertex 7000? Best vendor for the Vertex?

Shame it looks like this one isn't ready for prime time yet, but hopefully given a few months they can work out the kinks and and it will be ready for round 2, kinda sad to hear the WiFi and IP ports are basically for show though , would have been awesome if those could have been used for a web GUI configuration or even better being able to link multiple of these in an area so they all function as one to blanket an area (or connect to different states/cites).

Hi Randy, this is Shane from Michigan. I have Far's questions for you today. Not sure how to word this though. Does a 50watt GMRS radio have a maximum distance limit of how far the signal can be thrown to its first repeater tower? or is this question more about the line of sight and or how tall a GMRS radio tower is no matter the distance apart? Used in an example: A Base station 50watt radio with an 80-foot antenna and the closest repeater tower is 100 miles away or 250 miles away? Both are in line of sight of each other. Or maybe my question should be how far can repeater towers be away from each before they won't communicate to each other? Probably a stupid questions, eh? but one I'm not privy to. I'm working on getting my own base station going and I want to set up this free emergency repeater for all to use. I've heard vague discussion with some groups on setting up emergency communications at great distances between repeaters and we are quite lacking that here in Michigan. Thanks for your help. Shane

Wow 😲 and then bummer 😕

Willing to pay the money as soon as all glitches fixed

happy that you got your monies back, but sad that you lost a friend.

Didn't see the wife's boyfreinds car wash coming perfect comedic timing too funny.

Time for Wouxan to step up to the plate.

Randy, I also was an anxious purchaser of this repeater. turns out much difficulty with software and high power ended up being a whopping 14.5 watts! Thank goodness for Paypal refund safety net!

Finally

Was the new BTech repeater working with Zello? I have no idea how any of this stuff works but I enjoy monitoring your repeater from the other side of the country.

Fucking amazing. The end.

Random comment, but I love your Donald Trump picture frame in the background.. ❤

Well i had high hopes. I will wait for them to work out the issues. Uggg

Maybe you can dive into meshtastic stuff. I have recently started looking into that.

Sad to see that it didnt work out. I'm very interested in this thing if they can get it right. Seems like the price is a little steep for something that has very limited remote configuration capabilities... but theres an ethernet port and so my pp is tingly if they turn that on.

This was like watching Geraldo Rivera opening Al Capone’s vault. Where the hell is the climax? That’s a phrase I learned from my wife. Oh well, at least Donald looks interested.

that acronym though

off topic ...can you recommend a portable gmrs radio that has a built-in PA system...

that's methed up!

B tech motto - Works Great, til it doesn’t !

Same thing happened to me

Wow

Are you certain that it wasn’t the ‘Commission for Radio Aerial Propagation’?

It happens

The end

While disappointing, not unexpected. I think they are experiencing growing pains, but hopefully will sort it out soon.

So basically what you’re saying is that BTECH sells rebranded Chinese radios but has better customer service than most retail giants. Luckily I’ve had 0 issues with my BTECH radio but I’m glad they will stand behind their products.

But how many fars will it get

I had a feeling that this repeater would not perform well. It's a new product so it's expected to have bugs and problems upon initial release. So we'll see how they manage problems.

Howdy can you review the midland GXT GMRS 5-WATT TWO-WAY RADIO - GXT67 PRO thank you 😊

lol, his private folder with Ryan Renolds video.

To those guys on "THAT" GMRS channel that were so very excited about this repeater, all I can say is....I TOLD YOU SO!

It is a shame you had issues with it so soon after unboxing, but at least BTech gave you some great customer service. I am sure given some more time the bugs will be all worked out.

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