Leaderboard

What are you looking to extend? HT use? Typically using a repeater that is open to the public doesn't require any special permission from the owner. Depending on your setup, they would have no way of knowing anyway. That said, cross-band repeat into another repeater is a massive PITA. You have significant delay during the switching process and you can't talk until the repeater drops and your cross-band repeater drops out of transmit mode. You likely won't hear the first couple of words of others and if you start talking too soon, people may not hear your first few words.

Jones has it right regarding the Community repeater falling under Part 90 - and requiring each individual (or group) using the repeater to be licensed. The Licensing for a Community repeater will show an FB4 designation. That said, most Community repeaters have gone the way of Party Line telephones. The current method that most shops use is the FB6 "Private Carrier" - which means that the business who owns the repeater is the Licensee, and then they rent out airtime to individuals or user groups. The biggest advantage to the FB6 Private Carrier designation is that you don't need to go get each user a 10 year license, especially if the use would be short term, like an event rental. Cost for a 10 year license in Part 90 is $170 - PLUS you need to pay a Frequency Coordination fee (As far as I know, you cannot self-coordinate any FB6 repeater pairs). Frequency Coordination is a 3rd party, and the fees they charge can vary - but figure on spending between $350 to $500 for an FB6 coordination on a single frequency pair at a single site. Multiple pairs or Multi site systems can run much higher. Frequency Coordination is a one time fee - and once you're built out and on the air, your only ongoing License fee is the (current) $170 renewal fee to the FCC every 10 years. Truly pennies per day to operate, and Coordination means that you should not be stepping on someone else's toes every time you key up, but in crowded Metropolitan areas, you will most likely not have truly exclusive use of a channel.

He has tagged the article as BTECH V1. I think he means see above tag. ...right at the top of the page, under the title.

I recommend 400-470 if you think you'll eventually get your Ham license or would like to monitor Ham. If not then 450-512 is fine, but I've never had a need to go past 467. They both work the same for GMRS since GMRS is just 462-467.