Two repeaters on the same frequency and tones, 20 miles apart. What to do?

[Suburbazine]

So what's the correct way to address a repeater conflict? Where I'm at seems to have 2 active repeaters on 550 141.3 and any transmits are coming back heavily stepped on in the region between. Is there an official way to contact both owners that isn't going to offend them? WRJZ925 and WRFL895

 

EDIT: WRFL seems to have noticed my comment and deconflicted.

PS: It seems like this would be a great chance for MyGMRS to do something really cool and check their database automatically for conflicts when new repeaters are listed. Don't know how complicated checking estimated range overlap would be, though.

[WRYZ926]

I have two repeaters within 50 miles of me that are on the same channel. One is east of me and one is west of me. The east repeater does not use tones while the west repeater does use tones. Most of the time I don't hardly ever hear the east repeater due to terrain between us but I can easily get into the west repeater. At times I get both repeaters. 

When I am picking up the east repeater it is usually at an s4 or s5 on my radio's signal strength meter. And I normally get the west repeater at an s6 or s7. The east repeater without tones definitely interferes with my ability to talk on and hear the west repeater when I am receiving both at the same time. 

So yes two repeaters that are about 100 miles apart can and will cause issues with anyone in between the two trying to talk on just one of the repeaters. Conditions and locations will have an effect.

[LeoG]

On 12/20/2024 at 2:40 PM, WSFJ980 said:

Here is a hypothetical.... Let's put repeaters along the interstate highway system spaced at some distance apart that would pretty much assure continuous coverage as someone drives.  All the repeaters would be on the same channel with the same tone, but they would NOT be linked in any way.  What kind of interference do you think there would be?  I'm thinking that one user could not activate more than two repeaters at the same time depending on output power, and the repeaters could not activate each other since the input and output frequencies are different.  However, two repeaters could possibly be transmitting the same message at the same time, which could cause degradation of the message heard by users.  Would it be that bad as to be unusable or unpractical?  Could the interference be mitigated somewhat by changing the distance between repeaters?  I would appreciate any feedback.

Cell phones do that all the time.