For our area, John hit it on the head. We have a linked system with about 7 or 8 repeaters across several counties and the guys on the south repeaters would pretty much only talk to others in south. The guys in the north only talked to the people in the north.
We polled a few in each area and found that they were uncomfortable talking to others that they did not know. Once we started sending out messages to the different groups to "meet someone new", it got a lot better. Now the north/south barrier is not as pronounced. We also had the same problem with too many repeaters / not enough users, so we simply linked them all together. The links are progrmmable so if in the future it gets too busy, one or more repeaters could be branched off to lessen the load on the whole system. I'd be surprised to see anyone getting more than 10% usage. Ours is more like 1% and with system all connected, Echolink and IRLP. Dwayne Kincaid WD8OYG > > > People just don't have much to talk about with people too far away from > them, pointing up the fact that repeaters are mostly social gathering > places, and its not interesting to socialize with people you don't really > know :-) > > I guess I'm as bad as anyone though. I stick to one repeater, monitor one > other but rarely talk on it (just a couple of people there that I talk to, > and they aren't on much), and ignore the rest of the repeaters around :-) > > _____ >> > > > Our club operates a RF full-time linked repeater system in metro New > York City, currently comprised of four (4) repeaters. We've observed > that the addition of a new repeater into the system doesn't always > equate to added usage. In fact, we've noticed that many of the linked > systems in metro NYC typically aren't as busy as local area stand alone > systems. > > We're puzzled as to why people seem to shy away from most, but not all, > of the very wide coverage area systems. The busiest repeaters in our > area seem to be the "no frills" stand alones. Are voice IDs, courtesy > tones, and coverage footprints beyond a 25-mile radius just more than > people can handle nowadays? > > Comments anyone? >
