Dad? I'm not sure what you want here.

[Guest panhapp]

Please clarify. Is all I need to own and operate a repeter the regular license Or do I need anything else?

[OffRoaderX]

The repeater has to be associated with a licensed GMRS user, so according to the FCCs, you need a GMRS license, but that is all you need.  

[Socalgmrs]

I think the real question is do you NEED a repeater.  If your asking this question you may not have a clue what a repeater does or if you actually need one. 

[Hoppyjr]

Nevermind

[TerriKennedy]

17 hours ago, Guest panhapp said:

Please clarify. Is all I need to own and operate a repeter the regular license Or do I need anything else?

You need a regular license, and a lot of time, money and research to set up a repeater - over in the General Discussion forum there's a sticky titled "You just got your GMRS license, now you want your own repeater?" which is well worth reading through.

To summarize - a 5W repeater with an antenna on your balcony isn't going to perform better than a handheld with the same antenna on your balcony. By the time you're thinking about higher power, higher elevation, etc. you're talking serious money. Even with a 50W repeater that "fell into my lap" (ouch!), I'm probably looking at $2500 for the survey, antenna, feedline, mast, etc.

 

[TDM827]

As mentioned, you need a GMRS license. And depending what type of repeater build out you want, about $800 to $2500 is nice to have laying around.  

[GrouserPad]

If guy is asking these questions he surely probably shouldn't be putting up a repeater whatsoever. Just my opinion. One should get ahold of all other gmrs users in the area and do alot of research in the local community to see if there are other repeaters already available that would work for his purposes. I also believe someone putting up a repeater should spend ALOT of time in their radio use area listening to the gmrs channels and scanning the entire gmrs service to get a feel for what channels are used often by which people. Nobody owns the airwaves but it is a really good thing to be vigilant about what and who you may be causing issues with when deciding to just randomly slap a repeater onto one of the repeater channels, which if i had to guess, this fella probably doesn't even know that some channels aren't legal for repeater useage and others are actually intended for it. But I digress....... just my input. At the end of the day do what you want but first put in the work to try and not negatively affect your local gmrs community.....

[TerriKennedy]

22 hours ago, GrouserPad said:

If guy is asking these questions he surely probably shouldn't be putting up a repeater whatsoever. Just my opinion. One should get ahold of all other gmrs users in the area and do alot of research in the local community to see if there are other repeaters already available that would work for his purposes. I also believe someone putting up a repeater should spend ALOT of time in their radio use area listening to the gmrs channels and scanning the entire gmrs service to get a feel for what channels are used often by which people. Nobody owns the airwaves but it is a really good thing to be vigilant about what and who you may be causing issues with when deciding to just randomly slap a repeater onto one of the repeater channels, which if i had to guess, this fella probably doesn't even know that some channels aren't legal for repeater useage and others are actually intended for it. But I digress....... just my input. At the end of the day do what you want but first put in the work to try and not negatively affect your local gmrs community.....

I agree with everything you said. I had my license for 5+ years before I even considered setting up a repeater. Despite being just across the Hudson from Manhattan, there isn't repeater I can copy clearly (with an NA771 antenna on an upper floor of my house).

There's a group of repeaters that were apparently networked at one time, and may still be. The group that manages that repeater has their web site serving up a browser search extension that could be classified as malware, the repeater time announcements are off by 58 minutes (DST + clock drift) so apparently nobody with repeater management access is "minding the store".

I occasionally hear other repeaters ID, but they seem to be limited to emergency services and the ID's are infrequent enough that I think they're just "keepalive" checks.

Those are on various GMRS repeater frequency pairs, with the least traffic on .700.

We had a repeater here in Jersey City on .700 but it seems to be inactive (although still listed here). The operator's GMRS license expired 5 years ago, they were last active here 7 years ago, and the repeater doesn't respond to its published input tone even when I'm standing in the street right in front of its reported location. So I think it's safe to say it is gone.

I started The New JC 700 to replace it. Right now the temporary antenna is in a sub-optimal location, pending a DB408-B antenna mounted on a 20' mast on my roof peak, which is 50' AGL on a natural ridgeline. So the antenna will top out at a hair under 80' AGL. A few users have registered for access here, but success seems to be about 50/50. It should improve when the new antenna goes up in 2 months.

There is a bunch of itinerant simplex traffic on 462.700 weekday afternoons. It seems to be school bus dispatching, probably using FRS radios. I'm only a few blocks away from several schools so it is probably one of those.