QSO App markQSO App

Your first contact, through a repeater

A repeater hears you on its input and repeats you on its output from a high site, so a handheld reaches a whole region, and somebody is listening to it most of the day. That is why it comes before simplex. Pick one from the list; the offset and tone come from its record. Give your callsign and "listening" once; repeater users answer when they can.

Search around you, then press Pick on the machine to try. Worth trying first; a linked node reaches further.

Or find nodes by place

AllStarLink publishes no coordinate for a node, only the location its owner typed, so this finds nodes by that text. Repeaters carry real coordinates and need a position.

A repeater is the machine on a hilltop that hears your radio on one frequency and repeats it on another, which is how a handheld covers a county. A node is an internet link into the radio network. A node with a frequency is a radio on the air, so a handheld in range reaches it; a node without one is a hub or a hotspot, reached from a phone app only. A repeater with a linked node is both: your handheld into it, and out of any node it is linked to, anywhere. Most listed nodes are not connected at any given moment, which is why the switch above starts on. Talking straight to another operator with no machine in between is simplex, or direct.

Everything here is FM voice. Parts of every band are set aside for Morse, weak-signal and satellite work (on 2 m, 144.000 to 144.300 and 145.800 to 146.000; on 70 cm, 432 to 438), so set a frequency from a list like this one or a repeater's record, never a round number picked by hand.

A node sits at the middle of the town its owner typed, near enough to find, never the antenna itself. Repeaters carry real coordinates. Missing one, or a detail is wrong? The repeater directory is where records are added, fixed and claimed.