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Old June 8th 08, 12:27 AM posted to rec.radio.amateur.moderated
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"Howard Lester" wrote in message
acomip...

I thought about installing my 2m radio in my car so that I have something to
occupy part of my cross-country drive next year (I hope), but maybe it's not
worth it. If I knew there were folks along the way regularly monitoring .52,
I'd do it.


Fugetaboutit!

K0CKB and I travel many thousands of miles a year in a coach with "K0HB & K0CKB
monitoring 146.52" prominently displayed on the back.

We also frequently announce our presence on .52. In the past 5 years we've had
precisely 2 QSO's on .52 as a result.

Don't bother.

73, de Hans, K0HB



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Old June 8th 08, 01:12 AM posted to rec.radio.amateur.moderated
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"KØHB" wrote

K0CKB and I travel many thousands of miles a year in a coach with "K0HB &
K0CKB monitoring 146.52" prominently displayed on the back.

We also frequently announce our presence on .52. In the past 5 years
we've had precisely 2 QSO's on .52 as a result.

Don't bother.


Thanks, Hans. That'll save me from making a bunch of unnecessary holes in my
nice car.... and the price of a fancy new repeater directory. *sigh* I'll
wait until I get to 1-land and get to know my new neighbors.

N7SO


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Old June 8th 08, 03:04 AM posted to rec.radio.amateur.moderated
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On Fri, 6 Jun 2008 23:04:55 EDT, (Mark Kramer)
wrote:

And then the stuff hits the fan and the groups that were going to support
the local hospital and power company and red cross and cop shop and road
department find themselves all trying to use the one or two repeaters
you'd like them to be limited to, while the DStar systems sit silent
because nobody could afford the radios to use them.


One of the several radio clubs which I am a member of maintains a
rather extensive UHF repeater system which usually sits silent except
for about a half-dozen of us during commute hours or when we are doing
some exercise like Field Day. If this was to "go away" (fat chance of
that, knowing the reality of the situation and the folks involved) the
local medical center where I am the Disaster Communications Team
co-manager would be without required ham radio backup. We went to
that arrangement when we found out in a real disaster last December
that the local ARES groups could not accommodate the type of traffic
that we needed because of their own overloads.

Consider the trap that the FCC's first-generation automated Spectrum
Management System fell into some 30+ years ago. It sat on Fire Radio
Service frequencies and reported no activity. Of course not - if
there are no fires there is no radio traffic, and the vast majority of
fire radio activity is with 5-watt on-scene HTs. Similarly, it
reported almost no Railroad Radio Service traffic in New York City -
where the monitoring was done during daytime and the bulk of freight
movements are at night. And to cap it off, it reported continuous
occupancy of a lot of channels in Chicago 24/7, until one of the old
hands at the Field Office listened and found out that it was a
defective electrical device throwing RFI into the air.
--

73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

From a Clearing in the Silicon Forest

Beaverton (Washington County) Oregon

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

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Old June 8th 08, 03:05 AM posted to rec.radio.amateur.moderated
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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

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Old June 8th 08, 03:05 AM posted to rec.radio.amateur.moderated
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KØHB wrote:
"Howard Lester" wrote in message
acomip...

I thought about installing my 2m radio in my car so that I have something to
occupy part of my cross-country drive next year (I hope), but maybe it's not
worth it. If I knew there were folks along the way regularly monitoring .52,
I'd do it.


Fugetaboutit!

K0CKB and I travel many thousands of miles a year in a coach with "K0HB & K0CKB
monitoring 146.52" prominently displayed on the back.

We also frequently announce our presence on .52. In the past 5 years we've had
precisely 2 QSO's on .52 as a result.

Don't bother.

73, de Hans, K0HB



The last time I tried to have a QSO on .52 the other guy didn't have a
radio in his car. Hard to communicate that way.

Dave WD9BDZ



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Old June 8th 08, 10:34 AM posted to rec.radio.amateur.moderated
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KØHB wrote:
K0CKB and I travel many thousands of miles a year in a coach with "K0HB & K0CKB
monitoring 146.52" prominently displayed on the back.

We also frequently announce our presence on .52. In the past 5 years we've had
precisely 2 QSO's on .52 as a result.


Hans, reminds me of a story about a person I knew complaining
that he called several times and I didn't answer (the cell
phone.) I just looked at him and said, "I know. That's why I
have caller ID."

Do I need to put a smiley face here so every ones I'm just
teasing Hans a teensie bit?

Jeff-1.0
wa6fwi

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Old June 8th 08, 04:20 PM posted to rec.radio.amateur.moderated
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Phil Kane wrote:
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.


I am assuming that a repeater with ZERO activity is a repeater with no
one who cares about it. In one of your previous posts you mentioned a
repeater in your area which is "only" used during commute times and FD;
this is not zero activity and indicates that there is a core group of
people who care about the repeater.

The kind of repeater I'm talking about is one that might have been quite
active a decade ago, but has been running on inertia for several years.
Maybe it still responds to a signal on the input frequency, but the
chance of it having usable backup power is extremely low. Another issue
is potential damage during the disaster; if there is not a group of
people who use the repeater, no one will be there to make the
perhaps-trivial repairs necessary to get it back on the air.

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.


The key word in your sentence is "used". "Zero activity" is
incompatible with "used".

I said, "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." I did not imply that if a repeater is
silent that the maintenance is hit-and-miss. What I said is that if
there is not a group of people who care about the repeater, it's likely
to be useless in a disaster, and I stand by that statement.

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.


Any repeater that has a regular group that uses it during commute does
not fall under the category of "zero activity", and obviously there is a
group of people who care about it.

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


Good. I think that perhaps you misinterpreted my initial comment to be
that a repeater needs to have constant activity to be viable, and that's
not what I was trying to say. I do stand by my initial statement that,
given the choice of a dozen zero-use repeaters or a couple of busy ones,
I'll take the lower number of busy ones because they will be more likely
to survive a disaster.

And again let me point out the difference between urban and rural
environments. The simple fact that you have a higher population density
almost guarantees that you have more people using the repeater(s). Of
course, if you have many repeaters, the person-per-repeater number may
be as low as ours.

Our situation here in rural Minnesota is rather marginal. We do have a
local club with a core group of people who care enough about the
repeater to keep it going. On the other hand, our UHF repeater has been
down for almost a year now, and somehow the group has not been able to
get it back on the air, primarily because one person has promised to
provide a new site for the repeater and has not followed through on that
commitment.

We had an actual disaster a few months ago, not in this immediate area
but in rural Minnesota. There was a need for ham radio communications
because the incident was "down in a hole" where cellphones wouldn't
work. (Floods often happen in river valleys.) The response was not
what it should have been. Part of this is due to the low number of
hams, and part is due to the lack of organization.

73, Steve KB9X

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Old June 8th 08, 07:55 PM posted to rec.radio.amateur.moderated
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"KØHB" wrote in
:


"Michael Coslo" wrote in message
...


If we want to generate traffic on the repeaters, the simplest way is
to generate some traffic on them. Get a friend and talk on the thing.
Next thing you know, others will join you. If enough places do that,
there will be plenty of traffic.


I didn't make my point very well. We don't need to "generate
traffic", we simply need to clean out the dead "legacy" assignments
and free up room for things like DStar and other emerging
technologies.

I just had a look at our local (Minneapolis/St Paul) pair assignments.
In the 2M and 75CM bands there are 108 repeater pairs assigned. You
read right --- ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHT! Yet I can scan both bands for
hours on end and hear nothing.



I'm not sure that the idea of getting rid of analog repeaters so that D-
Star repeaters can be given those frequencies is really going to do
much. If your area has 108 repeater pairs coordinated, and no activity,
I suspect that a D-Star repeater will be likewise not have much
activity. At this time you would probably just have one more repeater
that isn't used.

Your area's problem is lack of interest, not too many repeaters. My
point is if Hams start using the repeaters, they might bootstrap
interest.

After interest is generated, then the possible next conversation might
be "Hey, we have that old repeater on the south side of town, maybe a
group of us can get together and go digital....

- 73 de Mike N3LI -

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Old June 8th 08, 09:20 PM posted to rec.radio.amateur.moderated
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"Mike Coslo" wrote in message
36...


I'm not sure that the idea of getting rid of analog repeaters so that D-
Star repeaters can be given those frequencies is really going to do
much. If your area has 108 repeater pairs coordinated, and no activity,
I suspect that a D-Star repeater will be likewise not have much
activity. At this time you would probably just have one more repeater
that isn't used.

Your area's problem is lack of interest, not too many repeaters. My
point is if Hams start using the repeaters, they might bootstrap
interest.

After interest is generated, then the possible next conversation might
be "Hey, we have that old repeater on the south side of town, maybe a
group of us can get together and go digital....


Condensing that, could we say "You guys can't have a pair for your newfangled
technology until you busy up all the silent analog repeaters." ?

73, de Hans, K0HB
Still listening.



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Old June 9th 08, 08:02 PM posted to rec.radio.amateur.moderated
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KØHB wrote:

Condensing that, could we say "You guys can't have a pair for your newfangled
technology until you busy up all the silent analog repeaters." ?



Respectfully no. my lack of communication skills is showing sorely.

What I am saying is that if the sum total of communications is Zero, no
one will use a new repeater, D-Star or analog.

Further, I am saying that if no one is interested, who among the
disinterested is going to put up that repeater?

Finally, if interest is generated, perhaps some of the interested will
remove that unused analog repeater, and put a digital one in it's place.

Or the condensed version:

An unused digital repeater sounds the same as an unused analog one. ;^)


- 73 de Mike N3LI -

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