Dave Platt wrote:
In article ,
Phil Kane wrote:


According to what I've heard, that's a "hot button" topic, but Bill
Cross of the FCC (an active ham) said at Dayton that he applies the
"duck test" to the D-Star repeaters (making them eligible for
automatic control).

That makes good sense to me.

As I understand it, some D-Star advocates are claiming that a D-Star
repeater isn't a repeater, because the regs state that a repeater
retransmits the incoming signal "instantaneously", and the packet
delay in a D-Star system makes it not-instantaneous... that it's
fundamentally a store-and-forward system, more like a BBS (albeit with
a very short storage time).

One B too many IMO! ;^)



That same line of thought (if valid) would seem to apply to a fairly
high percentage of ham-radio analog repeaters on the air today. It's
quite common to have a digital or bucket-brigate delay device in the
receiver audio path, with the analog audio being presented to the
repeater controller and transmitter some time (up to tens of
milliseconds) after it was actually demodulated by the receiver. This
can help reduce the chopping-off of the first part of the first
syllable, and allows the transmitter to be un-keyed at the end of the
transmission before the beginning of the squelch-tail noise burst gets
out of the delay pipeline.


Our repeater system uses several polling receivers at different sites.
(6 or 7 IIRC) The recievers transmit their received signals to the main
site. The main repeater site determines which is the strongest signal,
and sends that one through to the main repeater transmitter.

As you can imagine, there is some delay there too. Maybe 250 milliseconds.


I can't recall hearing anyone argue that an FM analog repeater with an
analog bucket-brigade (or even ADPCM digital) audio delay circuit was
magically "not a repeater" because the audio retransmission was not
"instantaneous". If the D-Star not-a-repeater proponents were to win
their case, it might be a *very* pyrrhic victory, as analog repeater
owners might also qualify to move into non-repeater frequency
segments. Sauce for the goose...

One of the biggest problems putting up a repeater these days is that
many areas are just full. There's no room at the Inn. And the area in
which a D-Star is likely to do best is in those crowded areas. So they
tried to do an end run around the issue. Without a lot of thought.

Seems like we have a nice patch of bandwidth between 2 meters and 440
that is a bit underutilized?

- 73 de Mike N3LI -

"Michael Coslo" wrote in message
...


One of the biggest problems putting up a repeater these days is that many
areas are just full. There's no room at the Inn. And the area in which a
D-Star is likely to do best is in those crowded areas. .


Depends on the definition of "full" or the definition of "crowded".

I live in a metropolitan area in which there are no VHF pairs available for
assignment. By some definition that might mean that the spectrum is "full" or
"crowded".

But you could shoot off a cannon on 2M most of the time and it wouldn't hit a
soul. Nobody. Not a signal to be heard. Some days you can scan every channel
in sequence for hours on end with not a peep heard. Then go to each QRG in
sequence and transmit "K0HB LISTENING". Nobody home.

I travel a lot, to large cities like Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Tucson,
Kansas City, Indianapolis, Detroit, OKC, DFW, Tucson, Phoenix, Denver, El
Paso/Las Cruces. It's the same everywhere. Just a scattering of signals on the
bands, but EVERY PAIR spoken for.

The NFCC needs to quit being the lapdog of the repeater owners, and do some
spectrum management housecleaning.

Before Bill Cross does.

In article "KØHB" writes:

But you could shoot off a cannon on 2M most of the time and it wouldn't hit a
soul. Nobody. Not a signal to be heard. Some days you can scan every channel
in sequence for hours on end with not a peep heard. Then go to each QRG in
sequence and transmit "K0HB LISTENING". Nobody home.

Well, "listening" generally is taken by an increasing number of folks as
meaning you are listening, not that you are soliciting a call. If I hear it,
and I also have some reason to talk to you, I may call. Of course, if I had
something to call you about, the cellphone in my pocket probably already took
care of that.

If you want to talk to someone, call them, or call cq.


I travel a lot, to large cities like Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Tucson,
Kansas City, Indianapolis, Detroit, OKC, DFW, Tucson, Phoenix, Denver, El
Paso/Las Cruces. It's the same everywhere. Just a scattering of signals on the
bands, but EVERY PAIR spoken for.

True. 10 - 15 years ago, they were busy. Now --- silent. It seems that way
everywhere.

I know that for me, I now have a small car with no good place for a rig, and
park in places where one might not want to leave one in the car. At home, being
married sort of cuts in to sitting in front of the radio all evening.

I don't know what took the interest away for everyone else. However, with
nobody on to talk to, I am less interested in solving the problems in the car
to get on, so if others are in the same boat, we all contribute to the
silence.

Alan
wa6azp

Alan wrote:
"KØHB" writes:

I travel a lot, to large cities like Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Tu
cson,
Kansas City, Indianapolis, Detroit, OKC, DFW, Tucson, Phoenix, Denver,
El
Paso/Las Cruces. It's the same everywhere. Just a scattering of sign
als on the
bands, but EVERY PAIR spoken for.

True. 10 - 15 years ago, they were busy. Now --- silent. It seems
that way
everywhere.

It's certainly that way in rural Minnesota. There are repeaters in many
of the small towns, and they're alive in the sense of being technically
there, but they're dead in the sense of anyone using them on a regular
basis. Sometimes there's a regular group who gets together in the
morning, but for our local repeater even that custom has faded away.

We lost our UHF repeater almost a year ago when the elevator it was on
was destroyed by lightning. [For you city slickers, the word "elevator"
out here in the sticks is used to describe a large structure in which
grain is stored.] That repeater is still silent. A new location was
secured, and funding for it was provided by the local emergency
management agency, but the antenna still hasn't been erected.

So I have to wonder, in metro areas where all the slots are "full", how
many of those repeaters actually exist and would respond if presented
with a correctly-toned signal on their published input frequency.
Perhaps more important, how many of them are used regularly? It might
actually make more sense to shut down several repeaters that don't have
a critical mass of users and move those small groups to the remaining
repeaters so that there was actually someone there to talk to. Better
to have two or three active repeaters in a metro area than a dozen dead
ones.

I don't know what took the interest away for everyone else. However,
with
nobody on to talk to, I am less interested in solving the problems in t
he car
to get on, so if others are in the same boat, we all contribute to the
silence.

It's a chicken and egg problem. I know that I'm contributing to the
problem; my 2-meter equipment consists of an HT, and I've considered
that I need to buy a "real" 2-meter rig and put up an antenna . . . but
it's difficult for me to justify the time and expense to do so when
there's no activity.

73, Steve KB9X

In article ,
Steve Bonine wrote:
Better
to have two or three active repeaters in a metro area than a dozen dead
ones.

Until there is an emergency and those two or three repeaters aren't
sufficient to support the emergency services operations going on.

Mark Kramer wrote:
Steve Bonine wrote:
Better
to have two or three active repeaters in a metro area than a dozen dead
ones.

Until there is an emergency and those two or three repeaters aren't
sufficient to support the emergency services operations going on.

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.

73, Steve KB9X

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

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

Mark Kramer wrote:
Steve Bonine wrote:
Better
to have two or three active repeaters in a metro area than a dozen dead
ones.

Until there is an emergency and those two or three repeaters aren't
sufficient to support the emergency services operations going on.

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.

An emergency service organization should put up and maintain their own
repeaters. For example, in the last 3 years, the Southern Nye County (NV) ARES
group put up and maintain four repeaters (2 on 2M and 2 on 70cm) so we will have
them in emergencies. We make a point to talk on them at least once a day to
make sure they work. But 99% of the time they are idle, and thus may appear to
the casual observer to be unused.

73 de Dick, AC7EL

"Steve Bonine" wrote

It's a chicken and egg problem. I know that I'm contributing to the
problem; my 2-meter equipment consists of an HT, and I've considered
that I need to buy a "real" 2-meter rig and put up an antenna . . . but
it's difficult for me to justify the time and expense to do so when
there's no activity.

There used to be so much activity around here in Tucson a decade or more
ago, and I was active in it, but I suppose everyone migrated to the
internet... ? 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. If repeaters didn't have all these
different tone accesses, I'd do it. I'm not going to spend each night of the
trip programming the radio to accommodate what repeaters I may encounter for
any given upcoming 500 mile stretch.

Howard

Howard Lester wrote:
There used to be so much activity around here in Tucson a decade or more
ago, and I was active in it, but I suppose everyone migrated to the
internet... ? 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. If repeaters didn't have all these
different tone accesses, I'd do it. I'm not going to spend each night of
the
trip programming the radio to accommodate what repeaters I may encounter
for
any given upcoming 500 mile stretch.

Howard

Hence, HF. You might hear more local activity on 10m. 80 or 40m during
daylight hours should also be good for local/regional activity.
Bryan WA7PRC