At 10/9/2009 06:32, you wrote: >I applaud the desire to build a "special event" 2-meter "portable" repeater. >I honestly think that most well-intentioned groups don't understand the >technical difficulty to accomplish this task without spending a lot of >money. > >However, it begs the question -- isn't there an existing, nearby 2-meter >repeater that could be used? > >Chuck >WB2EDV
In my case, sadly, no. Yeah, you'd think in the heart of the 2nd largest city in the US that there'd be a lot of HT-accessible repeaters to use. But at the time I set out to build my first 2 meter portable system, only ONE 2 meter repeater had adequate coverage along the 26.2 mile LA Marathon course. ONE! At the time, the course roughly ran a circle with its eastern-most point in downtown LA. So we needed HT coverage in downtown, Hollywood, the Fairfax district, & the Coliseum. Aside from the high building density in a few areas (not many - we don't have lots of highrises like NYC & Chicago), this shouldn't have been a difficult area to cover. Certainly there were a lot of repeaters that could be HEARD in the target area, but most were not HT-accessible. The situation is a little better now on 2 meters but still to this day there is a 220 repeater that should cover the whole course, & in fact can be heard solidly along the whole route, but has a deaf RX & apparently the owner doesn't want to fix it. So we ignore it & use our own system installed specifically for the event. Bob NO6B
