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Planning a repeater
Purpose, coverage goal, band, budget, and who will own and look after it.
Purpose, coverage goal, band, budget, and who will own and look after it.
A repeater is a shared resource that someone must pay for, power and look after for years, so the first question is why. Typical purposes are emergency communications, a club net, linking systems together, covering a specific hole, or acting as a node in a digital voice network. The purpose drives nearly every later choice.
Spectrum is limited: in a busy area there may be no free channel pair at all, and the frequency coordinator can recommend a different pair or a different band, and may find that nothing suitable is free. A coordinator is a volunteer body that recommends channels and cannot assign them (Frequency coordination and the ARRL). Before spending anything:
Pick the band for the goal: VHF repeaters for wide coverage and the most existing radios, UHF repeaters for buildings and smaller antennas, and HF and 10-meter repeaters for the rare exception. Coverage is set by antenna height and the handheld at the far end more than by repeater power; see Repeater antennas and coverage.
Think of the budget in categories, not a number:
| Category | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Radio gear | receiver, transmitter, controller, duplexer |
| Antenna system | antenna, feedline, mounting, lightning protection |
| Site | rent or a donated space, access, power connection |
| Power backup | batteries, charger, possibly a generator |
| Ongoing | electricity, internet if linked, insurance, spares, travel to the site |
The ongoing costs are the ones people forget. A repeater that costs little to start can cost steadily for years.
A repeater is an amateur station, so it is licensed like any other. Under 47 CFR 97.5 the FCC grants an individual's station license or a club station license (a military recreation station license also exists). A club license is held by a trustee: a licensed amateur designated by an officer of a club that has a name, a document of organization, management, a primary purpose in amateur radio and at least four persons. See Control operators and control points and Clubs, Elmers and community.
Either way, write down the backup plan before launch: how the site is powered during an outage, who holds the keys and the control-link codes, and who takes over if the owner moves or stops. See Running and maintaining a repeater for succession.