hmm....I live in NJ and there are currently only a few repeaters in the 
local area and i usally end up dropping part of a conversation because 
im so far and am using only 5 watts out of a 5/8 wave 2-mtr antenna....

I was thinking about the efforts and costs that are associated with 
operating a repeater....I did a 2 hour search on the web and didn't
find much...

has anyone here actually set up their own public amateur radio repeater?

does anyone know the average cost of buying a repeater?

im interested in knowing all the scary details :)

13 responses total.

I've not done it but I am technical director for our local ham club.  We
have three repeaters that we maintain.  Repeater cost varies depending on
how you go about it.  I've seen used repeaters for around $500.  Kit
repeaters are also an option. (Hamtronics has one as I recall.) you can
put together one from various parts collected at swaps and such or you
can get something like an Icom repeater for $2000 and up with all sorts of
bells and whistles. All of our repeaters operate from a single site so they
need expensive duplexers to keep the transmit out of the receive.  The 2M
machine uses a remote site due to intermod problems.  The 2M machine is an
old Motorolla unit.  Our 440 machine was concocted in a basement decades
ago and our 220 unit was a VHF Engineering kit.  They are all vintage
machines but they work pretty well.

If you want to go real cheap, you could go with a simplex repeater.  Look in
the back pages of amateur radio magazines for them and other nifty devices
for building or upgrading repeaters.

I would like to know of anything to do with tricking the repeaters for 
cellular phones into thinking that it is roaming

Cell Phreaking?  That has to do with ESN and other stuff programed into
the ROM of your phone.

Are there any repeaters in the Ann Arbor area that don't require a PL 
tone for access?  I go down there every so often, and there's no tone 
board in my venerable Kenwood TR-7850.  (Even if I added one, I'd only 
have one tone available.  The TONE switch is a simple on-off toggle.)

Try 146.960

http://n8tnt.com/txt/144mhz.txt lists that as having a 100.0 Hz PL tone,
but maybe it's wrong.

It does not need a tone.  I've noticed that in the ARRL Repeater Directory
too.  It's wrong.  We put a PL on the 440 machine because if local intermod
problems but the 2M machine has a remote receive site and intermod is not a
problem.... Yet...

Last night, at the ARROW meeting, everyone thought it required a 100 Hz
PL tone. Now, if someone could find a 2-m radio and try it out, we
might have the facts about this....there must be one around here somewhere....
hmmm, ah, here it is: "This is N8REG testing." beeep. Yup, no PL tone
required. 

Thanks.

My experience living in Minneapolis last summer has convinced me that my
next 2m radio should have PL tone capability -- most repeaters there
required a tone for access.  The 7850 is a great radio, and I've gotten
many compliments on its audio quality, but it was built before PL tones
were common on amateur repeaters.  It's also rather large, which may be
a problem when I get a smaller car.

I leave my PL tone on at 100 Hz for all repeaters, whether they use it or
not. A few repeaters use something else, although, at the moment, I don't
remember why, since the frequencies are coordinated. Hmmm, I suppose if
there were a distant repeater whose output frequency was the same as the
input frequency of another repeater, the latter would have to us a PL tone
to reject the other repeater's signal. Of course, once the local
repeater's gate is opened by a user, the other repeater's signal would
double on it. (I'm no repeater system expert, so perhaps someone will
sort this out for us.)

PL tones are used a lot on amateur repeaters in major metropolitan areas
where intermod is a problem.  They help keep intermod and noise (and in
some cases, people accessing distant repeaters on the same pair) from
opening the repeater's squelch.  When someone actually accesses the
repeater, the signal is generally strong enough to quiet the noise,
because of the "capture effect" of FM.  They're basically a way of
solving some problems that would be pretty intractable otherwise.  We
were considering adding one to W8YY's repeater for a while, because its
proximity to lots of computers tended to cause its squelch to open on
noise.  Using a PL tone seemed like a better idea than closing the
squelch down so much we shortened the repeater's range.

The *original* use for PL tones was to allow commercial users to share a
frequency without interfering with each other.  "PL" stands for "Private
Line".  Two businesses could get together and buy a license to use a
frequency and then share it by using different PL tones, without having
to listen to each other's radio calls all the time.  Commercial radios
usually have provisions for a "hanger switch" on the mic.  When you
remove the mic from the hanger, the tone squelch is disabled and you
hear any traffic on the frequency, so you can avoid doubling with other
users.

I've also seen PL tones referred to as "CTCSS tones," which I think
stands for "Continuous Tone Coded Squelch System."  "Private Line" may
be a Motorola trademark.

You are correct, PL is a Motorola designation.

Like "aspirin", it has entered the public domain of hams.

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