Choosing A Repeater Frequency

[nhphotogdotcom]

Good day,
I am considering finding a spot to put a repeater in my city, I hear some traffic monitoring repeater channels, and I am keeping track of the traffic, but still not sure on choosing a repeater channel.  I have not heard any traffic on 675, so I am leaning that way.  Someone to the south, possibly just south of the Manchester (MHT) airport, is on 725, and there is a group on 550 that I can only hear on my mobile radio (not of my portable or scanner, and these guys have the best conversations!).  I can trip the 725 repeater, but not the 550 repeater. I am CSQ on monitor on both of these, but have PLs on Tx, so just lucky that the PL I have on 725 is the same as that repeater (which I have programmed for another repeater in another state I travel to).

Any thoughts or input would be greatly appreciated.  

As for a location, I may actually have landed the possibility of putting it in the utility room on the roof of one of the high rises downtown.  The cool thing is, not only will I have a UPS on it, I understand that the power in that room is on a generator.  

Tim
 

[Logan5]

If there had been usable repeater in my area, I would not have invested in repeater equipment myself. If you can not gain access to or permission and still wish to deploy a repeater of your own, Keep listening until you find an unused or least used freq. Also monitor the 467.xxx inputs, If 675 is available that would be great as 675 is the non official emergency calling freq. and you could also chose to run the travel tone on any of the GMRS repeater pairs and run as an ORI conforming repeater. Once you have your repeater or pair of useful radios, you will need to understand duplexors and feedline. If I had access to a highrise, I would just run two antennas properly separated. Welcome to the hobby and have fun.

[uniden278]

There a quite a few repeaters in Mass using all of the available frequencies, so the reach of your system would be a consideration. I know there is (or at least was) a machine on 625 in Nashua though I've never used it. But to summarize the machines I know of/use in Mass:

 

550- Quincy (128 belt/south shore coastal areas) and Medford (local)

575- Quincy- Covers to southern NH

600- Kingston (a super machine- covers quite far!)

650- my repeater in Winthrop

625- Boston (moderate coverage), Arlington (decent coverage)

700- Lincoln area, decent coverage

725- Wilmington, probably covers up your way

 

Following to see where you set yours up, because I have a potential plan to set another machine up in Newburyport and as you know the pairs around here are already pretty crowded.

 

Also, the 550 machine is listed here as LIT 55-o and is run by a member here. I can confirm the input tone is different from the output tone. Just reach out to him for access.

 

PS: I'm jealous of your good fortune. The best site I have access to is a 4 story apartment building and it's at or just above sea level with some small hills around.

Edited February 11, 2018 by WQVA296