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Category: Ham Repeaters

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Review Summary For : Hamtronics
Reviews: 5MSRP:
Description:
Hamtronics radio equipment and kits.
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.hamtronics.com
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
1554.8
WD4LUR Rating: 2024-11-27
Great Tx and receivers for repeater use Time Owned: more than 12 months.

I built a homebrew repeater around the Hamtronics TA451 transmitter and R451 receiver back in 1994.
What I have found is if you built the boards and align them correctly, they work great.
This repeater has operated all these years with no failures.
W5AOX Rating: 2017-04-19
T304 microphonic woes Time Owned: more than 12 months.
This Hamtronics T304 synthesized UHF exciter has been in service over a year or so. It has survived infinite SWR problems with bad tower connections etc, and endured hours of key-down operation without failure.
Now, for the negative: This exciter is SUPER SENSITIVE to microphonics and induced hum from almost anything. When the exciter board was mounted in the shielded enclosure, what sounded like synthesizer hum was omnipresent. Only thing that cured the hum was to mount the exciter on insulated standoffs with NO connection to the surrounding enclosure.
W5KVV Rating: 2017-04-02
Solid performer Time Owned: more than 12 months.
This review is for the Hamtronics REP 200 repeater in the VHF flavor. Our club has one that has now been on the air for 10 years. It has been an excellent repeater. It's equipped with the TD-5 tone boards both encode & decode, and the LNP-146 preselector.

We are using a CAT-200 controller & a Duracomm power supply. The antenna is a db224 @ 531' HAAT. Feedline is 7/8" hard line.

Many great long winded qso's have been had on this machine. It just keeps on ticking. The Motorola MRF1946A final transistor provides 30 watts of clean RF power and has held up remarkably well considering the use its seen. The LNP 146 preselector is mouse ear tight. The RX is quite hot opening squelch at just 0.13 uV. Combined with the preselector, this makes for an excellent RX.

I see some folks have had issues with the REP 200 series from Hamtronics, but ours has been bullet proof. If i found another that hadn't been butchered, I'd buy it today. It's simple, small & frequency agile. What more do you need?

PCARC/W5CUQ
McAlester,OK
145.370 - PL 71.9
KA2AYR Rating: 2008-08-15
Makes me feel like I did something! Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I have a number of Hamtronics strips that I've turned into repeaters and voting receivers since around 1989. I built many of them and put them into RF-tight boxes with feedthrough caps. If anything went wrong, Jerry, the owner is usually a phone call away. His personal support adds value for me. The instructions are very clear and well communicated.

While the 6 meter RX strips are great, I had a great deal of distortion on the 6 meter TX strip. I made it better by injecting CTCSS into a varactor, but the audio had to be kept low to reduce distortion. I would not recommend the 6 meter transmitter, but everything else is fine.

I use 440 and 6 meter strips in a standby version of my repeater. They are built into RF-tight boxes and mounted to a chassis plate with wiring harnesses. They work nicely and there are many options for control, including interface into various controllers. I have also used type-accepted units for public safety use.
AC5PS Rating: 2004-03-06
Keeps on going.... Time Owned: more than 12 months.
The UHF REP-200T has been on for 13 months with no problems. The out put power is still 10 watts into a antenna with an SWR of 1.5:1, you have to push your PTT for a secound before talking, doesnt bother me.