Oh my goodness you guys get all bent out of shape easily. Sigh... guys, guys, guys...
Let me share a little tidbit from a book (there's three other "rules" that go with this one... they're posted next to my desks and the living room TV): "DON'T TAKE ANYTHING PERSONALLY - Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering." With that in mind... if someone's "dream" is to have prefixing, great. No one needs to take it personally if I don't want it, don't understand it, don't need it, or give them a hard time about saying it's a "requirement". It's not my dream. I thought we were here to discuss repeaters and repeater systems, and I really want to know what they use it for. That's all. I even spent quite a bit of effort explaining and thinking about how an S-Com could do something similar without the feature... but it wasn't appreciated, I guess. Doesn't matter... it was a fun mental exercise to see if the controller I like to use could get close to the feature or match it. The comments I made were jokes... but they were true. Again, if people take them too seriously -- I can't help that. I certainly didn't make any insinuation that people are "bad" or anything else, or that I'm not using linked systems myself regularly. My jokes were just good natured joshing to try to shake an answer out of ANYONE about this ever-so-important (my emphasis) feature. I've asked three times now what the heck any user needs to control on a remote repeater, and no one has answered that question. I'm to the point where I am starting to laugh out loud about the answers that come back. Really. Real laughter. I'm just sitting here shaking my head... At this point I have heard: - Who did it - That they built it with bubble gum and twine decades ago - That it's a "must have" requirement for any controller placed on some system in California - That it acts just like the phone company - That the system has done it for decades - That it's a really elegant fix for some problem Maybe I missed a few. But NO IDEA here, why anyone would actually use it. Do users REALLY remotely command remote repeaters they're not even on? Really? Mine don't, but we'd never program anything to do that... other than "features" like an autopatch or a remote base (we don't have any of those around here, really), or an internet link or something like that. But standard repeater controls -- like PL? Nah. What for? Have you ever known me to to purposefully mean to anyone here? Why would I start now? That's silly. Is someone going to share the "secret decoder ring" information about what useful purpose having a user control a remote repeater serves? If there's no real purpose, other than "just because we want to - but there's no technical reason for it nor does anyone use it more than maybe one time a year", then just say so. It's not like that would be surprising in ham radio. It's just a hobby and we like our toys? Fine with me! More than fine, really -- toys are great! And if I bothered anyone with the question, or the good-natured ribbing I tried to see if it'd finally shake an answer loose... well, that's their problem, really. People see things like they see 'em. I can't change that. Would love it if I had better jokes and tricks the charismatic people use to cajole people, but I tried to be funny and you guys got all bent out of shape. Ha... I guess I suck at it. As usual. Nothing new there. -- Nate Duehr, WY0X
