Jeff Liebermann wrote:

That last time I did that (about 30 years ago), on a commercial
system, there was a huge difference in transmit and receive footprint.
Some locations could hear but not talk. Others were the other way
around. Either way, the customers were not thrilled. We went back to
one antenna per radio.

That's basically our problem. The repeater we want to use was developed
with the criterea that if you parked your car, turned on your 25 watt
or higher radio with a 5/8 wave whip and was able to "kerchunk" the
repeater, the area was "covered". This coverage was mapped out around 1990.

Since then population has expanded, new housing has been built and new hams
have become licensed. 2011 critera is in order to be covered, a ham with
a watt HT has to be able to be understood.

The main repeater in question is able to reach the sea twoard the north west
to the southwest (about 35 miles), but can't even be heard 2-3 KM to the north
in spots, and has almost no reception to the southeast.

Our proposed solution is not radio links as they are a expensive, need to
be mainainted on site, etc. Internet remote receivers are very cheap, for
example, an HT an interface to the computer and an old P4 (needs built in
ethernet) makes a useable one and costs a couple of dollars a month in
electrcity. Obvously the location has to have decent internet bandwidth
with 64k bits per second spare.

Performance can be improved with a better radio and antenna, but in some
places, there is only one ham that needs to be "covered".

There may even be real money for real equipment later, but not now.

Geoff.


--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM
Making your enemy reliant on software you support is the best revenge.