What radio for home brewed repeater
 

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!

JB