Is it legal for one GMRS station to act as a "human relay" in a simplex network?
My thought was this:
During an emergency, if an area is not served by a repeater, or the repeater is down, would it be possible / legal to set up a "human" relay station, where one member of the group has a high-vantage point and would be willing to serve as a relay among the members?
I was thinking that if the volunteer human-relay station activated only on the words "relay" after a call, he would then repeat what he heard to establish the link among the two stations that can't hear each other directly - much like a non-human repeater. Brevity is key by just using the word "relay" to get things rolling in time. THIS is where I have trouble with the legality.
The comms would go something like this:
Unit1 to Unit2...
...(nothing heard directly via simplex)....
Unit1 to Unit2 RELAY...
Unit 1 to Unit2 RELAY.. (the hilltop volunteer reacts to the word RELAY in the call, and repeats the request - would this be legal or would it be two-way communications and not a broadcast?)
Unit2 to Unit1 RELAY... (Unit2 responds to the call, but knows that to contact Unit1, he has to go through the relay, thus using "relay" at the end of the response.
Contact to the relay station directly:
Unit1 to Relay...
You get the idea. The simplex network with a human relay could easily be a star-topology, or simple linear extension.
I just have trouble with the legality of it. I suppose FRS would pose no problem, but there too I don't want to run into trouble.
My thought was this:
During an emergency, if an area is not served by a repeater, or the repeater is down, would it be possible / legal to set up a "human" relay station, where one member of the group has a high-vantage point and would be willing to serve as a relay among the members?
I was thinking that if the volunteer human-relay station activated only on the words "relay" after a call, he would then repeat what he heard to establish the link among the two stations that can't hear each other directly - much like a non-human repeater. Brevity is key by just using the word "relay" to get things rolling in time. THIS is where I have trouble with the legality.
The comms would go something like this:
Unit1 to Unit2...
...(nothing heard directly via simplex)....
Unit1 to Unit2 RELAY...
Unit 1 to Unit2 RELAY.. (the hilltop volunteer reacts to the word RELAY in the call, and repeats the request - would this be legal or would it be two-way communications and not a broadcast?)
Unit2 to Unit1 RELAY... (Unit2 responds to the call, but knows that to contact Unit1, he has to go through the relay, thus using "relay" at the end of the response.
Contact to the relay station directly:
Unit1 to Relay...
You get the idea. The simplex network with a human relay could easily be a star-topology, or simple linear extension.
I just have trouble with the legality of it. I suppose FRS would pose no problem, but there too I don't want to run into trouble.