Accidental repeater

[Blaise]

Not sure if this is more of a question or a funny story:

So I was fiddling with a couple of radios, and decided to turn vox on on one of them to try it out.  I was just about to change the channel on the second radio so I could hear if it worked, when someone's conversation came in over it.  While this happened, I realized that the tx light was on on the radio I just set for vox!

Did I just accidentally invent a $50 repeater?!?!?

[wqpn591]

Maybe a simplex repeater. But with the units that close together, seems like it would get stuck in transmit loop.

[Blaise]

What would they loop if they were on different channels?

 

[WyoJoe]

6 hours ago, Blaise said:

Not sure if this is more of a question or a funny story:

So I was fiddling with a couple of radios, and decided to turn vox on on one of them to try it out.  I was just about to change the channel on the second radio so I could hear if it worked, when someone's conversation came in over it.  While this happened, I realized that the tx light was on on the radio I just set for vox!

Did I just accidentally invent a $50 repeater?!?!?

This is essentially the concept that was used to set up a cheap Baofeng repeater that I saw in a Youtube video a few years ago. They did use cables between the radios to tie the output of one radio to the input of the other, and vice-versa, but the radios were set with VOX on so they would retransmit upon receiving a signal. I'm pretty sure, though I don't remember positively, that they were set up for cross-band repeat. Unless they used significant distance between the radios or very directional antennas, I don't think they would not work well otherwise.

If you didn't tie the radios together with cables, I believe, as wqpn591 said, they would likely get caught in a transmit loop where they just keep transmitting back and forth, at least if they were set up as a bi-directional repeater.