You've already gotten reasonable answers that I won't rehash. Let's
consider this, assuming that bumping the power up to 100 Watts doesn't
degrade your receiver, how do the users perceive things?
Flea powered HTs are the bane of repeater builders (or, at least, me),
but people love them. Most are designed with rather hot receivers that
give reasonable receive range with their small rubber-duck antennas.
Now let's assume that your current setup works such that as the
repeater is getting noisy in their receiver that they are dropping out
of the repeater, i.e. the repeater is still balanced (do you see where
I'm going?).
Now you bump the power and suddenly the HT user is hearing the repeater
full-quieting. Naturally he'll assume that he's in a better coverage
area but will find that he's dropping out (as before) even though he's
hearing the machine so much better. Of course, the complaints begin.
What has been gained? A different set of complaints (from personal
experience).
It sounds to me like your repeater is reasonably balanced and I
wouldn't do anything to upset that. I would leave it up to those that
need the needle pinned to improve their own stations.
73, de Nate >>
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