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