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I agree that most of this usually has to do with power and tower costs if the owner doesn't host it on an owned property. I have never viewed repeater access as a "right". If I own it, it's use is up to me, it is not public domain. The channel is, and if you want to use the output as your simplex, go ahead. I monitor before I transmit but if I am 15 miles away, I'm likely not going to hear a 3-4 watt portable working simplex. Sorry. As far as these stiff nosed repeater deals....well, some guy in my, say, region, supposedly has like 20 repeaters strung out over 7 counties, non over lapping mostly and not great coverage according to the maps, but has a real salty write up about "paying members only"....of course I don't believe that even half of his repeaters even exist. Has a big imagination. I run one repeater that is private (about 25 years) and one that is open (PL, but if someone wants to use it they can).

So here is my take on this as this has come up in the past. I run my repeaters with the travel tone and other tones. If a user wants a specific tone in the past and wanted to donate to the "repeater" fund I gave them another tone. More of the community tone aspect. Rarely did anyone ask or pay but I suggested when possible. My entire reasoning is the power bill. It was $35.00 a month and I had to pay it. I didn't care who used what but if i could recoup a little of that money to help offset the cost I tried. I went round and round with a ham club in the past about a similar item. They basically wanted to be in the shelter on the tower and not help out with anything yet they charged all there members dues yearly.... By no means did we kick anyone off or block users for not helping. I think anyone with that mentality should not own a repeater. As others have said in the past a repeater on a good tower can be very costly for the party that owns it.

Thanks to both of you all your help is much appreciated I am getting contact with the repeater that is local to me.