A lot of fun can be had listening and talking on the area 2-meter repeaters. I have scanned a lot of the repeaters lately and thought an article and repeater list was in store for our newsletter. I will start off by saying that the repeater owners, whether they are club, group, or individually sponsored, go to some expense to keep them maintained and on the air. Everyone appreciates a donation towards the care and feeding of their machine.

It is important to remember our manners while using these machines as well. Someone has their call sign on the repeaters and is responsible for what happens on them. Let us not put someone’s license at risk for failure to use proper amateur radio procedure.

As we use the area repeaters we develop favorites. We have a great selection of repeaters in our area. We have some low profile repeaters that have a small footprint and cover specific local areas. We have high profile repeaters that have large area coverage. We also have specialty repeaters that offer such things as echo link. This is a connection that can be made by Internet to long distance repeaters affording a chat via a handheld all around the world.

Our two-meter repeaters have nets called for emergency use, weather related events, technical talks, and general discussions and swap shop nets. Listening in on these nets is informative as well as entertaining.

I offer a list of area repeaters, which I personally use, listen to and. If you check a list such as the SERA Journal or ARRL produce, there will be many more listed.

One more thing I would like to share. The Petros machine, 147.255, does a link into the Southeastern Link Repeater Group. If you would like a show of how repeaters can be linked, it is Wednesday nights at 9:00 p.m. EST. They link several states together.

If you would like to see some pictures of area repeater sites go to Tim Berry's website - very interesting.