I think I’ve got this right: the longest a permanently located repeater could thus take to be a Mountain Goat is 1000 years, shortest would be 100 years. Hope the batteries are charged…
I think we can take it that there is little support for the idea of changing the repeater rule, then.
(Its just as well, because the MT have no intention of changing it!)
Brian
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Don’t forget the possibility of bonus points 
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I have said this before and will say it again. Repeaters in amateur radio come into two categories. One is building/installing/running the repeater or network of repeaters. The other is using repeaters.
Personally, I find the idea of designing and building repeaters and networks of them an interesting challenge. There’s lots of interesting engineering to consider to ensure they work and stay working with the minimum of input. Even if you assemble a system from COTS components and assemblies, setting up a repeater on a shared site with who knows how much RF and intermod products flying about is anything but trivial.
Then there’s using them. The hardest part of a mobile setup to use repeaters is finding somewhere to install the radio in a modern car as there is no free space. After that it’s a case of programming the radio to have the correct parameters for the repeaters and pushing the PTT. At this point, modern networked repeaters are no more than using a mobile phone except instead of just the “News of The World/Daily Mirror” and GCHQ listening to your phone call, the whole world can listen to your repeater QSO. Anyway my car has a big warning in the manual not use any RF device with an output exceeding 10W from 2MHz to 2GHz.
There’s little challenge to using them so they don’t float my boat. If you want to talk about building them or cool ideas for them then I’m interested.
Drone?! I suggested to use it to erect a 40m vertical antenna sometime ago when CT2JLS used his drone to do a video of his activation.
See https://youtu.be/mCMWD3OSQoQ?t=533
SOTA is about a challenge. It’s a challenge to make enough contacts with minimal equipment and wire antenna’s and dire conditions, it’s also a challenge to make satellite QSO’s from a portable location (and I have tried).
For repeaters there is no challenge, unless you want to set up high gain antenna’s and contact far away repeaters,
but for the chasers there is no challenge.
I do use repeaters and find them very under-used, with one very big exception: listen to PI2NOS, which I think has a 90% utilisation rate due to linking of 3 TX and about 12 RX stations, all on one frequency giving nationwide coverage in Holland. You can find it on echolink and on Pc7X - Tourisme les fait revenir. (map + audio).
I did work this Dutch repeater from G/SE-001 but did not even think of counting it as SOTA QSO’s, even though it was fun.
SOTA, for me at least, is different, mostly with a CW key on my knee and 5W from my trusty FT817nd.
73 Michael M0MPM - PA3BHF
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No, a drone isn’t muscle powered
I don’t know, your thumbs can get awfully fatigued twiddling those little joysticks :-s
Ideal for a bagpipes fan!
If you can’t use a repeater, and at the MT we are dead set against it, how about borrowing the frequency from a repeater? Make your call on the repeater output frequency and listen on the input frequency. Perfectly legal, and you can ask someone to QSY to a simplex channel if it’s a busy machine. If you want to find a place where many people may be monitoring, that’s the one.
Elliott, K6EL
Two skilled operators, two radios, and “nothing but air” in between them…and we call it Ham Radio.
Try it…you might just like it!
Pete
WA7JTM
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You CAN use a repeater to arrange SOTA contacts.
You make contact with potential chasers on the repeater, then QSY to the SOTA simplex frequency to make the official contact.
Just use repeater reverse, you arent using the repeater machine so it counts as a valid QSO. Most HH’s have a reverse button.
It might be interesting that in 1982 with only few stations on VHF/UHF (same as now!) the rules of the so-called “Sächsischer Bergwettbewerb” allowed terrestrial repeaters.
73, Alfred, OE5AKM
So what ?!..
“Sächsischer Bergwettbewerb” rules are “Sächsischer Bergwettbewerb” rules and
SOTA rules are SOTA rules.
Is this so difficult to understand ?
73 es qrt!
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I think it’s time this thread was closed. The topic has been exhausted.
73,
Walt (G3NYY)
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I think Walt you are 110% correct. So I will close this thread.
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