On Fri, 6 Jun 2008 23:05:49 EDT, Steve Bonine wrote:

If there are a dozen repeaters with zero activity, most will go dead in
any disaster because it takes real human interest and work to provide
emergency power. I'd rather have two or three solid repeaters than a
dozen where the maintenance is hit-and-miss and there's no one who
really cares whether they are up or not.

You assume that those repeaters do not have backup power. I found
that this was not the case in the ham communities of San Francisco and
Portland (OR) areas, the two places that I have had extensive
experience with VHF/UHF repeaters. Backup power is relatively easy to
get at those sites where ham and commercial facilities are co-located,
which are most of the places where the ham repeaters are.

Similarly, you assume that because a repeater is silent that "the
maintenance is hit-and-miss and there's no one who really cares
whether they are up or not". Again, my experience does not bear this
out. Most of the repeaters that are reported "silent" are because
they are kept alive by a small group of people whose activity is not
always observed by the casual ham. I'm the trustee of two club
repeaters maintained by one of the other members who is a 2-way radio
tech. Our 2 meter machine is used all the time by ham-licensed
truckers driving up and down the Interstate. The other is used only
by the few club members who have the 223 MHz band in their radios. The
casual listener would consider that one "unused", which is not the
case.

Similarly, during the many hours each day that I spend in my Comm
Center at home - a cross between a home office, a library, and a ham
shack - I maintain a speaker watch on the UHF repeater that my other
local club uses for commute-hour rag chews and is available for use
for hospital disaster communications. Except for the commute hours,
it is "silent" but I'm there to answer any calls and to join in the
rag chews. That seems to be the norm for the "silent" repeaters in
this "no pairs available" area. We do have several where there's
pretty frequent use, though.

Repeater-based ham radio is alive and well in Webfoot Country.
--

73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

From a Clearing in the Silicon Forest
Beaverton (Washington County) Oregon

e-mail: k2asp [at] arrl [dot] net