What is a Repeater? (HAM Radio) - TheSmokinApe

What is a Repeater? (HAM Radio) - TheSmokinApe

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I often get asked questions about repeaters in Ham Radio; what they are, who uses them and how they work. In this video I do my best to answer these questions...

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Thanks,
TheSmokinApe

[dougbrunelle]

Reliably getting in to a repeater 50 miles distant with a handheld transceiver is not an extreme case- on my morning walks in Oceanside, CA, I regularly access the 2-meter Keller Peak machine in Running Springs, CA, on 146.385 MHz, with just about full quieting on my TYT UV8000E. This repeater is about 70 miles straight-line distance from my location. What helps is having a good antenna.. the one I have is a 5/8-wave telescoping whip on 2 meters. It also helps that the repeater on Keller Peak is at about 8, 000 feet above sea level in the San Bernardino Mountains. :-)

[ghost-vmbb]

Covered all my questions and it made sense to me thank you.

[dantx]

I work at a large food processing plant and we use a repeater for our handheld radios I can tell because of the courtesy beep upon release of the ptt we use 461/466 mhz

[unclecow]

Great info man I listen to repeaters a lot useful when something happens to

[hullinstruments]

I buy lots of government auctions and deal mostly with test equipment and industrial control electronics… It helps find my addiction to test gear 😂

. I have zero experience with RF stuff… But I bought a load last week. For literally pennies on the dollar. Less than scrap price.

Two big pallets of Motorola repeater stuff. It included three like new MTR- 3000 repeaters like brand new… And a DBspectra brand DSCC85-06n combiner. Also a really pricey Motorola tt2654a controller. No idea why that controller would be $40, 000… And like I said I don’t know much about RF stuff in general I’m more a power electronics and industrial automation and control guy myself. No idea how to even source a buyer for this stuff but it sure is interesting stuff. It’s like black magic.

[heklik]

Can everyone use a repeater, is it free to link with it?

[eddieperez]

When communicating on linked repeaters, are the frequencies still the same for each repeater? In other words I can dial in my local repeater, but if I want to communicate with someone who 50-100 miles out and they are using their local repeater, how does that work?

[lIPuntolI]

thank you for the direction to the video. im still lost with Uplink Tone:127.3
, and
Downlink Tone:127.3. my question is where do i put these in Baofeng setting, and do i have to add both of them since they are the same. thanks alot for the video im learning more!! im like 12+hrs deep in research.

[revmatch]

To get two way comms going, do both HT's have to be with in the repeaters range or would a hand held only be able to transmit when the repeater is within my HT range? Example, say one HT was within 3 miles of a repeater and the other person was 20 miles away on an HT... Could the person that is 20 miles away RX and TX on that repeater to get a hold of the other Ham that is 3 miles away from the same repeater? I dont get how I see some videos of Hams using a repeater to reach someone 40+ miles away on a repeater but the repeater is only a few miles from the person in the video... how is the other side able to reach a repeater 40 miles away to reply?

[farhan]

Amazing video as always! Had a question though, in case of Orlando, what if I set up a different Uplink tone and downlink tone to just communicate with another friend without others listening. Is that possible too?

[SuAmigoElilegal]

Question here. What happend if people star using these repeaters for like communications like saying hi or small little grettings but with no lisense ham . What happends. I know people say their call sings everytime they use them but what if 2 people use them with no lisense i mean do they get in trouble or what happend

[corylahey]

Is a repeater only for reaching out to and transmitting farther, or can I use one to be able to scan and hear more frequencies?

[thesickening]

Sorry if this is a stupid question, I'm just trying to understand all this.

So say I want to talk to a buddy, using a repeater. My buddy and I are 10 miles away from eachother, and the repeater is in the middle, at 5 miles. To send (talk to him), would I need to have my radio set to the transmit freq, and he'd need to have his radio set to the receive freq? Then once he heard my message, would he then have to switch his radio freq to transmit and I would have to switch my radio to the receive freq? Then we'd have to keep switching back and forth in order to communicate with eachother?

I feel like I'm way off here, but idk.

[SuAmigoElilegal]

Hello sir how do I use my baofeng radio to call other countries. Like using Allstars or echolink. Can I program my boafen to dothat without using a computer

[SuAmigoElilegal]

I have a set of vhf radios motorollas and another set of uhf motorollas cp200. Witch radios will be better range and quality to use on repeaters.

[David-kghc]

I've noticed a few repeaters in my area where you see the tone, it just says cts? What the heck is that.

[SuAmigoElilegal]

Are repeaters big hight local antennas that transmit singals over 2 way radios. If so can we use those local antennas as repeaters for our radios and are those free to acces

[Joshuaxiong]

3:19 That’s not correct on saying baofeng.

[XAGR-hnqt]

Who on earth does this for a hobby wtf 😂 that’s weird