As a former twice board of director member of the Texas VHFM Society as well as a life member of the once great organization, I want to clarify a few things in Robert's post.
Number one, the Society does not "regulate" a damn thing.. only the FCC regulates amateur radio in the US...the Society is supposed to suggest frequency coordination but under FCC rules there is no legal requirement for such... Both Riley Hollingsworth and Laura Mitchell have stated at that several times.. The Society used to be the premiere organization but it is slowly degradated down to a pile of manure in the last 10 years.. It is now putting repeaters on 10 kilohertz splinters on two meters and that was never passed by the membership!! A number of us who are life members are waiting for the next society meeting to vote the assholes out.. and to try to return it to a respectable organization. Either that or we'll be looking at legal action... As far as CTCSS tones are concerned, they were originally started in the commercial two-way side to allow multiple users to share repeater frequencies. Hence the term community repeaters or CRs as they were known... One problem with subaudible tone is it only takes a slight extra signal to interfere with the CTCSS decode.. the heterodyne causes decoders to mute, which results in poorer range than if the repeater was in carrier access. In fact Tuesday night, I was driving back from Kirbyville trying to access the Beaumont 146.94 repeater during the East Coast reflector technet. Even though the repeater was full scale in the mobile, I couldn't get into it. But then I heard the heterodyne from the Houston repeater under the Beaumont repeater and realized that the receiver was probably hearing somebody accessing the Houston machine but was also getting into the Beaumont receiver yet with the improper tone they weren't keying the repeater up but they were enough signal where the decoder was not hearing my subaudible tone clean. In other words CTCSS does not eliminate interference! It only masks it... And then it's some cases it can be worse than without subaudible tone... QST in their "the doctor is in" column had a similar question asked and the answer was "go put PL on your repeater, that'll cure the interference!" I laughed my ass off on that one. Unfortunately with us being near the Gulf Coast, tropo is a way of life for us. We could space repeaters 300 miles apart and still have it! When we first had inverted splits in Texas and Florida was non inverted, we had lockups across the Gulf of Mexico... This is why Texas went 20 kHz on 2 m. It was either that or non-inverted 15 kilohertz splits, which would not work at all. In fact I'm the one who made the proposal at the TXVHFM Society meeting in the Dallas area in 1984 that we adopt a 20 kilohertz channel spacing on 146 to 148 MHz. If 15 kilohertz is so damn good, why is the 145 repeater sub band 20 kHz across the entire United States? When I ask that question all I hear is crickets.. ☺️ Chris WB5ITT ex WR5AOK Trustee/Owner W5APX Beaumont 146.94 and Lake Charles 146.88, both 100 Hz and full time linked Soon adding 29.65- , 53.05-, along with 224.4/444.5 On Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 2:52 AM Robert Polinski via BVARC <bvarc@bvarc.org> wrote: > The Texas VHF-FM Society, the group that regulates the repeaters in Texas. > Now requires all repeaters to have a CTCSS tone to access, They do not > require a repeater to broadcast a tone. Tones are selected to prevent a > distant signal from bringing up a repeater far away. There is a 146.940 > repeater in Houston, Austin, Lufkin, Beaumont. If there were no tone you > with the right location and conditions, bring more than one up at a time. > The advantage of programming a receive tone is when the band is open, you > do not have to hear all the skip from other machines. There are quite a few > repeaters that do not broadcast a CTCSS tone but require them to transmit > on them. You do not have to program a receive tone in your radio even if > the repeater broadcast it, it just make the radio work better as it does > not open the receiver unless it hears the tone. But before programming your > radio with a receive tone, make sure the repeater broadcast one. > > > > Another point, some repeaters have a higher freq CTCSS tone than others. > Lots of Houston (south Texas ) use 103.5 our Houston 146.940 uses 167.9 > This is an audio tone. If you use a speaker or headphones with wide > dynamic range, you can hear the CTCSS tone. This will sound like a hum. To > avoid this, use only communications speakers or headphone. Or you can build > a simple filter to block out the lower freq. > > > > *From:* BVARC <bvarc-boun...@bvarc.org> *On Behalf Of *Christopher Boone > via BVARC > *Sent:* Wednesday, February 22, 2023 9:46 PM > *To:* BRAZOS VALLEY AMATEUR RADIO CLUB <bvarc@bvarc.org> > *Cc:* Christopher Boone <setxtele...@gmail.com> > *Subject:* Re: [BVARC] Icom 52a CTCSS / RX CTCSS confusion > > > > Most repeaters do not do cross tone. They transmit the same tone as they > receive. Tone encode means that your radio just transmits the tone but is > carrier squelch on receive... Tone squelch means that the transmitter > transmits the tone and the receiver requires the same tone to unsquelch... > This is of course provided that the repeater is transmitting the tone. > There are some repeaters that only have tone on the receiver but not on the > transmitter. I know of at least one in Houston but as far as the tones > being different? No I don't know of anybody doing that except maybe one UHF > repeater. > > > > On Wed, Feb 22, 2023, 9:34 PM Gayle Dotts via BVARC <bvarc@bvarc.org> > wrote: > > When I have CTCSS Hz / RX CTCSS as different values, as set by Texas > repeaters book, I thought your "Tone mode" is set to TSQL as a result I > hear nothing and Tx nothing. But...I can hear good set to TONE but I am > not getting out at all. Please advise. > > > > Thankb you > > ________________________________________________ > Brazos Valley Amateur Radio Club > > BVARC mailing list > BVARC@bvarc.org > http://mail.bvarc.org/mailman/listinfo/bvarc_bvarc.org > Publicly available archives are available here: > https://www.mail-archive.com/bvarc@bvarc.org/ > > ________________________________________________ > Brazos Valley Amateur Radio Club > > BVARC mailing list > BVARC@bvarc.org > http://mail.bvarc.org/mailman/listinfo/bvarc_bvarc.org > Publicly available archives are available here: > https://www.mail-archive.com/bvarc@bvarc.org/ >
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