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.

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.  The phone patches are your for your enjoyment, have fun with them and have a good time with your ham buddies!

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.