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I'm a newbie with radios and frequencies, but I was doing some tests to listen and transmit on one repeater near me (Cambridge MA) and it worked very well (as far as I understand).

The problem consists that I have a friend that lives in Bridgewater town MA and he wants to connect with me. We were doing some more tests together in Cambridge. We both could hear each other very well and we kept the communication going for over 20 miles apart.

Also: He is able to connect to his repeater and the way he tested it is that he listened to a "welcome speech" once he hit his repeater in Bridgetown.

I was doing some research but couldn't find anything right on point for my problem. How can we connect together even that we live far apart ? Can we use our site repeaters to connect together ? If yes, how ? We both have amateur Baofeng radios, like the common ones.

How to tell the radio to "use this repeater and forward it to Bridgewater town repeater"?

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  • $\begingroup$ Welcome to this site. Please note that Ham is not an acronym, thus it is not spelled with all caps. $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 13, 2024 at 17:20
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    $\begingroup$ two quick questions: how long have you been licensed and do you have access/interest in digital radio? $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 14, 2024 at 13:35

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Typically you would connect by both talking to the same repeater. The point of the repeater is to put an antenna up really high so that you both can reach it. Repeaters typically have a 50-100 mile range, but it could be more or less. Google says your two cities are 28 miles apart which could be well within the range of a repeater (assuming no mountains in the way).

Alternately, if one or both of you can find a reachable repeater with an echolink connection, you can either link two repeaters together or one can contact the repeater directly through echolink while the other uses a radio. (IRLP can also do this, but it can only link repeaters together.)

Some digital mode repeaters (DMR, DSTAR) may also be able to link to each other over internet.

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Please note that some repeaters are chained together in a network so that boinking one nearby repeater with your Baofeng will light up the entire chain, tremendously increasing the useful range of a handheld. This process is automatic.

For example, here in the pacific northwest we have something called the Peak Radio Association which operates repeaters stretching across 400 miles' worth of the Interstate 5 corridor. Keying 145.13 in Corvallis, Oregon lets you communicate as far south as Mt. Shasta City in CA and as far north as Battle Ground, WA.

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