Amateur Radio Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for amateur radio enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Think of it this way you go to a lake and to skip a stone across the water each bounce gets you further and further.
Is their a way to do the same with repeaters to reach a distance
Example: I start at repeater A and then use repeater A to reach B until I get the distance that I need.
Is it possible and what is the procedure to do so.
In any country or region, the block of repeater input frequencies will be distinct from repeater output frequencies. As you can't change the output frequency of a repeater, it will never just be captured by the input of another repeater.
For example in the USA, on 2 metres, there's a 600 kHz split and the freqencies are allocated like this: (from here)
| input frequencies | output frequencies |
|---|---|
| 144.60-144.90 | 145.20-145.50 |
| 146.01-146.37 | 146.01-146.37 |
| 146.01-146.37 | 146.01-146.37 |
It is possible to link repeaters together to extend their coverage. This can be done by listening to each other's output, with dedicated links between repeaters (at 70 cm or above) or using phone lines or the internet.
One example I'm aware of is the Cape Linked Repeater Network which interconnects more than 20 wide-area repeaters along 1000 km of coastline.
The links can be broken by DTMF tones, so the repeaters can be used normally for long chats or club events, and then reconnected at quiet times to allow travellers access to the whole network.
There seems to be a similar network across eastern Manitoba and Western Ontario.
Repeaters have input and output frequencies based on a band plan, and generally, those are selected specifically to prevent one repeater from activating another.
Having said that, there are linked repeater groups that share audio, and internet linked repeaters via echolink, IRLP, DStar, and DMR.
Repeater A would need to repeat its input to the input of repeater B. So, I suppose so if you could convince your local organizations to break with the usual repeater separation. Not sure how this could be coordinated so regular folks could also use repeaters local to them. There would have to be some sort of controller managing the traffic across the network.
This is sort of what setups like DMR-MARC are all about, though it's a lot easier with digital modes that tell the transceivers what to do, and when to do it.
You can do so if those repeaters are linked together - which you would have to check with the administrator.
PRA is one larger example of one linked across several states.
