Batboard

Hello

I have a situation where in the not too distant future I would like to run 2 repeaters(Quantars in astro mode) linked together to have a larger geographic coverage area

I would like to have shared frequencies, I dont know if this is possible but basically radio roams out of Quantar 1 radio range and into Quantar 2 radio range and what is said within quantar 2 range gets repeated to quantar 1

I know something similar is possible with smartzone but i cant justify the costs.

radios are running DES-OFB over Astro and the repeaters will be transparent to the whole encryption, which i would like over the range of 2 repeaters.

I dont wish to use any form of Radio over IP or telephone line as i need the whole system to be secure

Is it possible for 2 repeaters to share channels and retransmit their input to the other repeater? Is there a better way to do this?

Im sure someone with a lot more experience than me has come across this problem before.

thanks in advance.

One solution would be to use leased lines to connect both repeaters to a common Astro-TAC3000 voter. The system would operate in simulcast mode. That would allow you to use the same frequencies for each repeater although you could use two repeater pairs since the voter has no way to know that the remote repeaters are on separate frequencies.

"Secure" wouldn't be an issue with the leased lines in this case since the interconnection would be in the digital domain using modems connected to the stations's V.24 ports and thus carry whatever encryption was used over the air.

Alternatively, if you used different frequencies for each repeater, depending on the frequencies, the site separation, and the type of antennas that can be used, you could connect one of the Quantars back-to-back to another co-located Quantar that would serve as a control station to link to the other repeater. That connection would be V.24 port to V.24 port.

If you use a common frequency pair for the two repeaters or otherwise can't configure an in-band control station link, then you could use a different frequency band for the link but that would of course necessitate four Quantar stations to implement the system.

All of these scenarios are 'all digital' and avoid double-vocoding, decryption, or any 'clear voice' exposure.