Cross band repeat

[VETCOMMS]

Do any of you use an HT in your house with a mobile attached to a base antenna in your detached garage set on cross band repeat?  I'm trying to think of a way to keep the antenna off my house yet still be able to access area repeaters or talk simplex.   Will this work?

[marcspaz]

I have a base station, currently, but for more than a decade I would use the crossband repeater in my Jeep to talk on the repeaters. It was kind of a pain to go outside to switch repeaters, but it worked pretty well.

[WRTC928]

My mobile radio has crossband repeat capability. It's a nice feature, but TBH, I'll probably never use it. There are so many repeaters in my area that I can hit with an HT that I doubt the issue will come up. I suppose it might be useful when traveling to other parts of the country. My days of camping out in the wilderness are past. Still, I think the capability is cool.

To answer the OP's question, I don't see any reason why that wouldn't work. If it's only you using it, the duty cycle probably won't be high enough to be a problem. It would not be working any more than if you were using it as a base station in your house. Still, because you won't be able to see it when it's in use, you might consider putting a small fan on it. If you want to get fancy, you could set it up so that the fan comes on when the radio reaches a specified temperature, or you could just set it to blow all the time. I can't imagine any downside to having a fan on it all the time except the negligible cost of electricity to run it.

[WRYZ926]

I use cross band repeat on my base radio (Icom IC-2730) quite often when I am working around outside. I can get into the local 2m repeater with my HT but I don't have the best signal doing so. I don't have to worry about where I am standing or which direction I am facing when using the HT when I use cross band repeats on my base radio.

[tweiss3]

I have crossband repeat available in the cars. At home I use an analog hotspot for home coverage when I don't want to jump on the base. It's simplex and connects to other repeaters with allstar. I have tossed the idea of building a small repeater that I could connect to one of the base stations, but haven't gone down that road yet.