On Oct 30, 2007, at 11:50 AM, Jim wrote: > Roger Stacey wrote: >> We are currently using about 12 Daniel's MT 3 VHF/UHF repeaters on >> our system >> (islandtrunksystem.org) >> >> Quality / Outstanding >> Reliability / Outstanding >> Price / not cheap >> >> http://www.danelec.com/ > > I think someone is fooling with someone here. From what I've been able > to see, Daniels is re-building Tait stations. The boards look nearly > identical, just changed the front panels. Tait is made in NZ, and > while > the RF has improved a good bit over what it was in the late 80's, > repeat > audio is not very good compared to GE/MA-Com, Motorola, or even the > Kenwood TKR's. Very mushy sounding. And they are cheap, maybe higher > then a TKR, but not that much.
From some discussions with other hams using them commercially and in public safety, it would appear that Daniels seems to have a pattern... they start by copying or licensing someone else's tech, and then they build their own... that way they're not "late to market" but they have to live with any problems that licensed technology early-on, and they then design their own systems. So I think it depends on when in the "lifecycle" of a particular product you get something, as to what your impression of their engineering might be. The specific example would be that a friend who does P25 work heavily, said that their original P25 systems were Moto boards dropped into their "encryption" module, but that changed later on. He also mentioned that they (like almost everyone else except Moto) don't send the proper digital signals during the repeater tail... the spec doesn't call for it, but it's obvious that they need to send the end-frame over and over during the tail -- but like many, they transmit dead analog carrier -- which the digital radios have no idea what to do with, and just lock out the channel during the tail.) This person thought that the Daniels engineers finally "got it" during later discussions and their latest versions of firmware would do this properly. > If someone gave me one to play with, I would, but I don't know if I'd > put it up at a commercial site. I think you'd be fine with doing that... unless you were trying out some new product/feature that they'd licensed/used from someone else. > Course, it could be worse-at least it ain't Spectrum! :-) So it sounds like Daniels gear is "evolutionary" instead of "revolutionary" but well-built and (at least) clean, most of the time. I'd try 'em if I had a project to build that had a real budget -- if their sales staff wasn't completely non-interested in Amateur sales! (That's my impression at least.) -- Nate Duehr, WY0X [EMAIL PROTECTED]
