Repeaters....cost?

[blindfire]

Just getting into this and am currently studying for my tech license. Hope to take it on Oct 28.

Talking to a friend about repeaters. he said that they are VERY expensive.

Define VERY.

Thousands of dollars, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands?

Just curious more than anything else.

Thanks

 

[ToddDubya]

It depends on what you want to do with it. You can make one out of two $30 Baofengs and it'll work. It won't be the best, far from it, but it will receive on one frequency and retransmit on another. Located on top of a hill it will let you talk to someone on the other side of that hill.

But for a packaged solution, you're probably in the thousands range, especially once you factor in antennas, power, batteries, etc.

 

[Finalygotabeltfed]

Repeaters can be had or made for cheap depending on how much you shop and your abilities.

Some things to think about are, its location, ability to control it over the air and the antenna.

Location needs to be on high ground if it is to be effective unless you want very local coverage.

Control is a must when the jamming and chronic kerchunking starts. Phone pairs are expensive so over the air control is really a must.

Antenna should be a gain type like a station master or maybe a bay type for best results.

Don't forget, repeater pairs have to be coordinated too, otherwise there will be complaints from existing repeater owners.

 

[cockpitbob]

I just looked around and I can't imaging putting together a repeater from used parts for under $1,500. New, I can imagine spending over $5K

One of the expensive parts is the duplexer. The repeater needs to receive micro-Watts on one frequency and transmit 100Watts on a frequency very, very close to the receive frequency. On a 145MHz repeater there is only 0.6MHz separating Rx and Tx. So, the duplexer needs to be an incredibly sharp filter to keep the 100W Tx from getting into the micro-Watt sensitive Rx. In the picture here, the 6 gold "cans" are the duplexer.

There are cheap ways to do it with cross-band repeaters where, for example, Tx operates on the 2M band and Rx on the 70cm band. No fancy duplexer is needed since the 2 frequencies are so far apart.

 

[drgrant]

To hams anything more than free is expensive, because most of them are skinflints, like worse than the guys that buy tauruses kind of skinflints. Cost depends on the band and power level.and how nutty you want to get on the antenna, tower, and cavities fir the RX. You could set up a modest one for a grand or less at home or easily spend 10 grand.

 

[ToddDubya]

To hams anything more than free is expensive, because most of them are skinflints, like worse than the guys that buy tauruses kind of skinflints. Cost depends on the band and power level.and how nutty you want to get on the antenna, tower, and cavities fir the RX. You could set up a modest one for a grand or less at home or easily spend 10 grand.

Free is my favorite price. If it's free, it's for me.

Now, these Tauruses you mentioned... Are they on clearance?

 

[n1oty]

I'm going to go out on a limb and politely suggest that you will probably be better served by joining a local club that already has a repeater on the air and use that.

 

[drgrant]

I'm going to go out on a limb and politely suggest that you will probably be better served by joining a local club that already has a repeater on the air and use that.

I think he's just doing a thought expiriment. Club repeaters can be a dumpster fire too depending on how you want to use it. Some of them get larded up with ARES/RACES crap, traffic nets, and other stuff that makes them unusable at different times. Like for example if i want to talk to my friend 10 miles away for an hour about random crap my interests are better served by a small local machine that doesn't have 10 people camped on it during primetime.