I'm thinking of starting a project with some of my radio friends to
build our own pc controlled repeater. I'm looking for input on
radios. The ouwld be 2 meter only, so that should help cut the field
down, I'm looking for a cheap,rugged, highly available radio capable
of very high duty cycle at 50 watts.

My initial thoughts were a pair of FT-1500M mobiles, but the receive
side could even be as simple as a scanner locked on the right
frequency.

I'm looking at the echolink software, and a rigblaster interface box.

I would love to hear what others have done!

The idea is that this would be a temporary repeater used for safety
operations around SCCA Performance Rally events in Northern Minnesota
where there is not currently any other repeater coverage. It would
only be for a day or two at a time, but would see near continual usage
when it was up.

I'd love to hear some comments!


Not to be too rude, but go here and read all the info and then come back and
ask questions.

http://www.repeater-builder.com/rbtip/

The normal ham transceivers will not cut it and the scanners are not well
shielded and very selective in the RF stages.

Old GE and Motorola units make very good starting points for the RF part of
a repeater.
You may want to go to the 440 band as the duplexers are easier to find at a
reasonable cost.