Edgefield County Amateur Radio Club
WR4EC · Edgefield County tower

The Repeater

Everything you need to get into the machine, whether this is your thousandth contact or your first.

Repeater specifications
CallsignWR4EC
Output (you listen)146.850 MHz
Input (you transmit)146.250 MHz
Offset−600 kHz
CTCSS tone91.5 Hz — transmit and receive
LocationEdgefield County tower, Edgefield, SC
NetworkSCHEART
Link code*38
Unlink code73

What a repeater does

Your handheld puts out about five watts into a stubby antenna. On its own that gets you a mile or two in hilly country. A repeater sits on a tower, hears your weak signal on one frequency, and rebroadcasts it instantly on another with far more power and a much better antenna.

The result: two people with cheap handhelds on opposite sides of the county talk to each other as if they were in the same room. That is the whole trick, and it is why the repeater is the centre of a local club.

Because it transmits and receives at the same time, the two frequencies must differ — that difference is the offset. On 2 metres in the United States it is conventionally 600 kHz, and ours is the standard minus offset.

Programming your radio

The single most common reason a new operator cannot get into a repeater is a missing tone. Work through these in order.

  1. Set the receive frequency

    Enter 146.850 MHz. This is what you listen on. If the repeater is busy you should now hear people talking — that alone confirms your radio and antenna work.

  2. Set the offset to minus 600 kHz

    Most radios have a setting called OFFSET, SHIFT, or DUP. Set the direction to − (minus) and the magnitude to 600 kHz. Your radio will then transmit on 146.250 MHz automatically.

    Some radios instead want the transmit frequency typed in directly. If so, enter 146.250 MHz as the TX frequency.

  3. Set the CTCSS tone to 91.5 Hz

    This is the step people miss. The repeater ignores any signal that does not carry a quiet 91.5 Hz sub-audible tone underneath it. Look for T CTCSS, TONE, or T-SQL in the menu and set it to 91.5 Hz.

    Tone vs. tone squelch

    Setting encode (often just "TONE") is required — it is what opens the repeater. Setting tone squelch ("T SQL") additionally silences your speaker unless an incoming signal carries the same tone. Start with encode only; add squelch later if you want a quieter radio.

  4. Save it to a memory channel

    Store the whole thing in a memory slot and give it a name like WR4EC. Doing this once means never fiddling with menus in the dark at Field Day.

  5. Key up and identify

    Press transmit, say your callsign, and let go. For a first transmission, this is entirely normal and welcome:

    "KO4AAP, listening."

    If someone is around, they will come back to you. If nobody answers, you have still identified legally and correctly — try again later in the evening when more people are monitoring.

Still not getting in?

Work down this list:

  • Can you hear the repeater at all? If not, it is a receive or antenna problem, not a tone problem.
  • Is the tone set to encode, not only receive?
  • Is the offset direction minus, not plus?
  • Is the radio in low-power mode indoors? Step outside or switch to high.
  • Is the stock rubber-duck antenna the problem? It usually is. A better antenna is the cheapest upgrade in the hobby.

The SCHEART network

The South Carolina Healthcare Emergency Amateur Radio Team links repeaters across the state so that hospitals and emergency managers have a communications path independent of commercial infrastructure. WR4EC is a member repeater.

When the network is linked, anything you say here goes out across the state. That is excellent for a scheduled net and rude in the middle of someone else's traffic, so:

  • Check the link status before using the repeater for local-only conversation.
  • Link with *38, unlink with 73.
  • If you link it, unlink it when you are done.

Weekly net schedules are on the SCHEART IRLP schedule.

Repeater etiquette

Short version: it is a shared resource and everyone can hear you.

  • Listen before transmitting. Ten seconds of listening prevents most problems.
  • Leave a gap. Pause a beat after someone unkeys — emergency traffic and stations wanting to join need a way in.
  • Identify every ten minutes and at the end of a conversation. That is the rule, and it is not onerous.
  • Say "break" for emergencies only. To join a normal conversation, just say your callsign in a gap.
  • Do not editorialise about other operators on the air. It never improves anything.

Nobody expects a newcomer to sound polished. Every operator on the repeater was once nervous keying up for the first time, and the ones worth listening to remember it.