My Name is Rody and I am interested in all aspects of radio
communication. I have been a ham radio operator for years
and now also obtained a GMRS License. I am thinking of
putting up a GMRS repeater in the orange county, upstate NY
area, to cover Florida, Goshin, Middletown and all other surrounding
towns. I would love to someday see a link of repeaters that would give
coverage from NYC through NJ, upstate
NY Pen. & Conn. A system like that would require a joint effort of
many repeater owners. We have similar systems in the amateur radio
world. My best to all and as we say in the ham world,
73's

Rody
GMRS-WQJN876
AMATEUR-N2PQP

FCC regs don't permit linking GMRS repeaters.

-nfsmith

There is nothing in the FCC R&R that says you can't link GMRS repeater, you
just can not go out of 'band' – you can link if you use GMRS pairs for your
link freq.'s and use a horizontal antenna system for point to point and a
controller that will allow you to monitor the system to see if the 'air' is
busy at the other site.

There was a system up here in Southern California that linked two GMRS
repeater sites using DTMF and DPL to control the link and a one GMRS pair to
link the two repeaters,

It is off the air now do to one of the sites being lost.

Pete – KAC0706/KA6OZS

Hi,

While there is no direct wording that repeater linking is forbidden, there
are many restrictions that make it difficult or impossible.

It's expressly forbidden to link through the public telephone service. You
seem aware of that.

As far as using a GMRS pair for link frequencies, I'm just not sure how you
would go about that practically, since the 467 band is only allowed as input
to a repeater, not an output. At least that's what I understand the regs to
be saying. I'll admit, I'm not the authority on what the regs are saying in
this regard; that's just what I understand them to be saying. For instance:

***********************************************************
(a) For a base station, fixed station, mobile station, or repeater
station (a GMRS station that simultaneously retransmits the transmission
of another GMRS station on a different channel or channels), the
licensee of the GMRS system must select the transmitting channels or
channel pairs (see Sec. 95.7(a) of this part) for the stations in the
GMRS system from the following 462 MHz channels:

462.5500, 462.5750, 462.6000, 462.6250, 462.6500, 462.6750, 462.7000 and
462.7250.

(b) For a mobile station, control station, or fixed station operated
in the duplex mode, the following 467 MHz channels may be used only to
transmit communications through a repeater station and for remotely
controlling a repeater station. The licensee of the GMRS system must
select the transmitting channels or channel pairs (see Sec. 95.7(a) of
this part) for the stations operated in the duplex mode, from the
following 467 MHz channels:

467.5500, 467.5750, 467.6000, 467.6250, 467.6500, 467.6750, 467.7000 and
467.7250.
***********************************************************

So, "467 MHz channels may be used only to transmit communications through a
repeater station"

and

"For a...repeater station... , the licensee of the GMRS system must select
the transmitting channels... for the stations in the GMRS system from the
following 462 MHz channels."

So, you can't retransmit on another 467 frequency to link to the second
repeater... MAYBE, it's not in violation of the regs to use a 462 frequency
as input to a repeater, however. So, perhaps you can have a radio at or near
the second repeater receive the 462 output signal of the first repeater and
have it retransmit at low power on the 467 input frequency of the second
repeater...

Anyway, bottom line is that it's not easy to be sure what's kosher here, and
I'll admit that it's not expressly forbidden. If you're going to do this,
though, I think you'd want to obtain a letter from the FCC clarifying that
your intention is all right with them.

I know one friend of mine is trying to obtain approval to accomplish just
that by linking the repeaters using licensed commercial frequencies. Since
the only expressly forbidden means of linking involves the use of public
telephone services, one would imagine it would be all right to do what he
intends, but he's wise enough to seek clarification from the FCC before he
does it.

-nfsmith