A wireless repeater and method for managing air interface communications is provided. A repeater may include a donor antenna, a coverage antenna, a mobile station modem, a processor, and data storage. The donor antenna will receive a plurality of air interface beams on the forward link from a radio access network. The coverage antenna will pass each forward link beam received to a mobile station being served by the repeater. Further, the donor antenna will pass each forward link air interface beam to the MSM, where the MSM will apply a rake receiver to identify a signal characteristic of the forward link of each beam received, and the processor will record in the data storage the signal characteristic corresponding to each beam. Given this data, the repeater will select an air interface beam with the most preferable signal characteristic, and will keep only this beam active for reverse link communications.