What's wrong with the repeater that it doesn't hear your ht? Is it just too far away, or is there a possibility that it's suffering from desense, or some other ailment that prevents it from hearing weak signals? I can talk into some well running UHF repeaters that are nearly 100 miles away with an HT. Yeah, that's a bit much, but if it's usable for a base station, there's a shadow of a chance it could be made to work with ht coverage. How far away is it? Line of sight? Does the HT hear the repeater?