Idea for Jim Weir

Jim,

Like a lot of small airports, we have quite a few people who park in the
parking lot, frequently on their lunch hours, to watch the airplanes land
and take off. It would be a nice PR opportunity if they could listen to the
CTAF while they're there. I've been thinking about a simple repeater that
would pick up the local CTAF chatter and retransmit it onto the FM band so
that they could tune their car radios in to listen. Would a simple VHF
receiver circuit be selective enough to pick up a single frequency in the
aviation band? There are a few two-transistor regenerative receiver
circuits around for the receiver portion, and quite a few simple FM
"wireless mic" circuits for the low-power transmitter part. IIRC, the FCC
allows a few milliwatts (microwatts?) to be broadcast in the FM band without
a license.

Alternatively we may just buy a cheap Rat Shack scanner and a cheap wireless
mic, hook them together and be done with it, but I thought that a kit of
parts to make such a device might be popular. Just a thought.

--
Bob (Chief Pilot, White Knuckle Airways)