Don't confuse a loud high level repeater system is an Alligator by default. ... and people shouldn't assume taking pride in a high performance repeater system is an ego trip... even though that sort of thing might be for "some people' as found in pretty much any buiness or hobby endeavour.
> "Al Wolfe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Having a very high-level flamethrower repeater around is not only > > a great communications resource... if the hardware operates well > > it's also impressive on your technical resume and a lot of fun to > > operate. > > So in other words, it's just an ego trip. These repeaters > are commonly known as Alligators. Not in every case... > We in downstate Illinois suffer from the two meter glut of RF > out of Chicago. There they have repeaters there with dozens of > receiver sites and multi-kilowatt ERP transmitters, usually > running about half scale 150 miles away. I would imagine a lot of the reason given for the high power operation is to penetrate into large concrete buildings and hard to reach locations within the metro (city) area. Not to mention the repeater owner might not be paying the full-boat electric bill at the site. :-) > But we cannot get into their systems running legal power. Might be by design... a few similar metro area systems out here have directional antennas on their voting receivers. Ya' really don't know unless you contact one of their technical people for that system and talk about their intended coverage area. One high level system out here tailors their active receivers by time of day & week along with a serious desire to eliminate specific problematic users. The type of users you read about in QST FCC Reports. > But they say they have "balanced systems"? What a crock! Might not be balanced by design... have you asked them about the intended system coverage area yet? I'm not defending an alligator repeater but there are very valid reasons why loud very repeaters might appear by some people to be at first glance to operate as an alligator machine. > If a repeater is full scale and I can't get into it with > 150 watts then something is very wrong! Or something is working exactly as designed and/or operated. > Al, K9SI Find out who is the technical person for the machine and ask'em Al. Who knows what you'll find out... The machine might be an alligator and it just might be configured to operate in special modes by design. We're doing that sort of thing out here on the West Coast all the time. You might not yet know the joys of operating or administrating a loud high level repeater system in a large Metro Area. Tis' a true "Windsheid Effect"... you should get a clear view both directions but at higher speeds there can often be a lot of annoying bugs trying to make their mark in front of everyone's face. cheers, skipp
