On 3/6/07, Kris Kirby <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Every user radio in my commercial fleet has the TOT set for 30 seconds. In > > my mind, that's more than enough time to get any important message across. > > Unfortunately, many Hams think otherwise...
Many hams think otherwise, because it's HAM radio -- not commercial. :-) I can't think of how you'd conduct a typical ham radio Net with 30 second timers without sounding rediculous. Just telling the members of whatever organization is meeting what the organization is, how to contact them, and any announcements would certainly take longer than that. > That's not a bad idea. I'd probably want to set it at 120 seconds; one > of the repeaters I grew up using had a 4-minute timer. We've used 3 minutes on our machines for a very long time... most folks are used to it. We have a "Net mode" on repeaters that host Nets that extends the timer out further and leaves the transmitter keyed full-time. > I program most of my radios for 300 seconds or five minutes, just in > case of stuck keys. Sometimes in a big ragchew where lots of questions are being asked or a complex topic being discussed, I've hit the 3 minute timer myself... and my radios are programmed to unkey in 3 minutes, so it's a race between the controller's view of "3 minutes" and my radio's. In my view, the only purpose of the timeout timers in a properly built repeater (capable of 100% duty-cycle 24/7) is to allow everyone to have a turn... there's no technical reason for a timeout timer on a repeater that's properly monitored and maintained. Interference and accidental key-downs without an ID dictate a 10 minute timer, but that's about it... If the repeater isn't built for 100% duty-cycle, it's not ready to do our primary mission of emergency communications -- but that's just my view... Nate WY0X
