Mini "home" cross repeater options-radios

So in this cold weather staying out of the shack and in the house is a fair nicer option,
I have been leaving the 897d on a local repeater in the shack with a small handy next to the speaker with the VOX turned on & tx set to low, allowing me to rx any repeater activity in the house from another handy.

Now whilst this has been useful, the ability to tx is not an option with the current set up,
I have now been looking at "cross band repeat" mode on radios to allow tx&rx from the handy in the house to the shack.

Sadly the ft897d doesn't have this option so I am looking for a small mobile radio that can sit in the shack happy on low power all day and running in cross band repeat mode to the wouxon 2/70 handheld.

Anyone else out there tried this  VHF/UHF set up ? 
I would be interested in radio recommendations & learn more of the pitfalls in set up & use.    

Thanks
Trevor.

Be great to hear how you get on with this Trevor.


Luckily my radio room is located in the house but it is upstairs and due to my disability requires some forward planning. (I can shuffle downstairs but require assistance from my wife to get upstairs.) As accomodating as my wife is she does not revere to the idea of dropping down a coax line to the living room for my radio.....apparently one room for my radios are more than enough!

I did experiment with a Bluetooth module hooked up to the radio using a headphone/mic combination which worked but has limited range and doesn't even manage from downstairs to upstairs. 

I looked into wi-fi options as well and it became a little confusing for homebrew construction as well as expensive for purchased options with no guarantee of functionality. 

Be great if you find a solution, perhaps that way I won't keep missing you on the GB3PI repeater
(More a problem at my end rather than yours.)


I shall keep an eye out for what you discover.

All the best,
Victor

Morning Victor.
No idea how this works never looked into it but.
I talked to a guy who was in the USA but transmitting remotely from Europe.
So from downstairs to upstairs should be a doddle for a guy of your caperbuility.

I thought I'd cracked it with the Bluetooth setup Alan mate, just the range was a problem.
Perhaps I need a Bluetooth PA or Linear and a bigger antenna on it!
(Bit difficult to strap all that on a headset....)

I'd soon be moaning that I can't change frequency after a while anyway

Don't know what I'm moaning about, the reason I'm playing with VHF antennas is so that I can open the repeater reliably from upstairs! Remote operation is the least of my problems at the moment.

A bit of checking and there are one or two rules to comply with, I wont go into detail but as I understand the points are as follows:

1)Foundation & Intermediate can only use 500mW pep e.r.p as the cross repeat power.
-Might find it difficult to find a mobile radio that will drop that low maybe?

2)The use of ctcss on the link to avoid it being used by others.
-easy enough.

3)Control of the link to enable to shut it down.
- I was thinking of controlling the mains power to the psu on one of those "green" remote plugs.
push of one the button and everything is off. 

4) link must use ham frequency above 30mhz.
-simple, 2m & 70cm use (PMR is not permitted)


And this is where I could do with someone using cross repeat to step in add a bit of info.........