Austin has two very good repeaters with "open" phone patches installed. "Open" means they don't require "secret" access codes. We welcome visitors and passers-thru to use the patches responsibly and have seen them used to report accidents and other events in near real-time.

AARC/ARO pays fees for the phone lines and these fees come from the club budget. Resident users of the repeaters and phone patches are requested to join the club and pay dues to help defray any fees and/or cost of maintenance.

The phone patches are primarily there to allow Hams to connect to a 911 dispatcher in times of need. They should not be used as a free cellphone, although you'll hear the privilege abused that way from time to time.

146.88 is in the north side of Austin (JJ Pickle UT Campus).
146.78 is in fairly deep South Austin.

Your position and antenna situation will help determine the best machine that may be better while walking/traveling around North or South Austin. One should rarely, if ever, use the phone patches from a residence.

Good operating techniques on a phonepatch:

Make sure you are not going to accidentally interfere with an ongoing conversation by asking,

PTT... "Is the frequency in use?" ...UNKEY

After you are sure you're not interrupting, say your call and announce your use of the phonepatch, then press * followed by the seven digit number, then unkey.

PTT... "This is (your callsign) accessing the patch, * (7-digit ph. Number)" ...UNKEY

After this transmission, the controller will announce:

"Phone Patch (7-digit ph. Number)"

You will hear some tones while the controller makes the connection, then hear the ring tones. When someone answers, it's good to let them know you are on an Amateur Radio phone patch and can't hear them when you are talking. They should already know to watch their language and subject content.

Enjoy and complete your conversation with whoever you called. The timer is set to 3 minutes and will automatically time out the call at that time.

Once finished, say your call again, announce you're finished and hang up by pressing the # button.

PTT... "This is (your callsign), clearing the autopatch # " ...UNKEY

After this transmission, the controller will announce

"Phone Patch complete"

The repeater will ID itself with voice or morse code.