You are absolutely right, Nate! One can go broke just obtaining / keeping-on-hand the necessary test equipment to build/maintain a repeater system, "cheap" (i.e. poor man's) or otherwise. Either way, you'll be a poor man by the time you finish building your project... hehehe
Until recently, I was fortunate enough to have a friend who is in the business (also a ham) assist me with the test equipment end of things. But now, he might be accepting a supervisory position with his company; if this does happen, he/I will lose his access to the test equipment we regularly needed to maintain my 440 repeater with remote receivers (SpectraTAC system). So it looks like I'll be haunting e-Pay more often looking for inexpensive test equipment, and trying to appease the XYL in the process. ;-p Add to that that I am trying to build a 900 machine, and the costs continue to rise... 73 de Mark - N9WYS -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Nate Duehr On 4/11/07, skipp025 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Re: Poor Mans Repeater Project anyone? I'd be interested in reading along and learning, but I'm not sure how much I could help -- I was mentored by MASTR II guys... They work so well for just about any type of project (Joe's 6m split-site is easy with a 6m and a UHF Mastr II mobile pair to swap parts around in!) that I don't know much else... But I'll watch, learn, and comment if I think I have anything useful to add... Pretty much, I'd consider myself a "poor man" when it comes to repeaters -- I work on club systems to feed my habit... since club members help foot the overall bill, and we all get to enjoy the results. That's probably one thing many budding repeater-builders don't realize... if you get sucked in, even a club paying for parts won't save you... you'll end up buying test gear, good cables for bench testing, good quality adapters and connectors, etc etc etc... it becomes a "lifestyle choice" to blow money on stupid repeater related "stuff"... to put it politically-correctly. Add in a weak-signal VHF+ "habit" and well, it's easy to be broke all the time, but as long as it's fun... why not? Cheap, well-engineered, and soon... pick any two! (As the saying goes!) Nate WY0X
