In Texas, there are a lot of repeaters. About 1,642 according to what some consider a reliable source. Of those, many are “paper repeaters” in that they exist only in repeater directories. These venerable books remind me of the yellow pages — one must ask, “do they still make those?”
It’s challenging to develop a well-curated file of repeaters. One source that’s made it rather easy is RepeaterBook, by ZMB2 software. They’re doing it right. Of all the repeater directories available, some great qualities set it apart:
– the ability of any account holder to submit changes easily;
– frequency files can be downloaded in CHIRP format for transceiver programming;
– the companion mobile app makes it easy to find repeaters in new areas, even more so if combined with the BlueCAT interface.
The result is that I can personally verify the operation of local repeaters, update the database at RepeaterBook, then run a query to download it into CHIRP. Now in my radio I have all the repeaters that work, and none that don’t. Just as it should be.
The benefits of crowd-sourcing a quality repeater directory only work if we all participate. Please do.
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