On Nov 21, 2007, at 8:59 AM, Tony L. wrote: > 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?
It's an interesting question you pose. Here in Colorado, the Colorado Connection (www.colcon.org) does a great job maintaining a state-wide VHF linked system. People don't exactly "shy away" from it, but if there's a local standalone repeater they'll often choose that before the linked system. When they need it, they know its there -- would be the mentality I would ascribe to it. My club (well, the one I found myself President of anyway!), the Colorado Repeater Association (www.w0cra.org - man I need to go update the website!) has a smaller-footprint linked VHF system for the Front Range with three sites, and it gets quite a bit of use -- but I generally think that's because of two things: - We have a LOT of nets from other groups... Colorado QRP club, Colorado YL's, Edge of Space Sciences (EOSS), Colorado Statewide RACES Net, our own club Net, Rocky Mountain Monitoring Net, and a local ARES Net. This gives people a connection to others and a reason to be there -- on certain nights. I wouldn't say the folks in all those groups always monitor the system, however. They show up for their social group, and probably have the repeater in a memory channel and/ or even in a scanner... but many of the folks in those organizations have other clubs and repeaters they "go home" to, after Nets. - At all other times, our club "markets" itself as a "ragchew" club. People are welcome to chat about whatever they like as long as they keep it clean and generally family-oriented. - We also have plenty of toys. IRLP, EchoLink, Autopatch... about the only thing we haven't done is remote-base type equipment. All the sites have access to the toys in some fashion or another, even if not on all bands/repeaters. We also have a number of standalone repeaters, at the same sites -- and two standalone repeaters at a very high site. The VHF high-site standalone repeater is constantly in use. The UHF high-site repeater gets a decent amount of use, but is quieter. The two UHF's at the lower sites get almost no use at all, other than folks making calls for family members -- they've become the "quiet calling" repeaters, I guess. I lament that they get little use, since they work so well -- but they aren't a maintenance headache, and generally just keep running and running -- so I guess they'll be there for while. Our 220 repeater is part of the VHF linked system, or it'd get little use. There's about four people who have rigs and use it. Other clubs in the area have excellent 220 repeaters that are virtually unused. It was installed back when Novices had voice privs on 220, and we could full-time link it so Novices could talk to their Tech, General, Advanced (remember those?) and Extra friends. UHF around here is full of privately owned-operated machines scattered in-between the club systems, and after a while you learn that the owner(s) and a few friends always monitor certain systems, even if they're listening to something else on VHF. Most have coverage the equals or rivals the club systems, many on the same sites. So - it's a mix. We're the only club with a multi-site linked system that I know of, besides the Statewide system. Right now, listening to the scanner, there's one of our elderly ham "characters" talking to one of our newer female members. He's always listening to the VHF linked system, and on there quite a bit between nets and other events. They've been talking on the Denver repeater for about an hour, and I've heard one or two other calls on the VHF high-site standalone today, but no traffic on the UHF's... pretty quiet for a day before a holiday. It'll pick up during drive-time, probably. The high-site UHF just popped up with a couple of our more active hams who were obviously both out and about, looking to meet up. After having studied our users habits for years, I honestly can't say I understand it -- sometimes the linked system is totally dead, and other times it's going all day with traffic on multiple repeaters. The Boulder and Colorado Springs repeaters are MUCH less used, I think because people equate the club with "Denver" and they have plenty of local repeaters with people they know on them in Boulder and Colorado Springs. After some repair trips this summer to Colorado Springs to get its power level back up, we're hearing a lot more check-ins on the Nets from down that direction, which makes sense. The Boulder machine's link suffers from audio quality issues, so I think people may be avoiding it somewhat for that reason, but there are some regular check-ins from that repeater also. I think the challenge for our club (and many others) in the coming years is in getting folks to meet and know each other. There's no reason (for many people) to talk on the repeaters to strangers. People have so much going on, that meeting and talking to new people (along with the inevitable "friction" that can sometimes cause if personalities and opinions don't quite mesh) is too much for them. I'm one of those folks that generally is an extrovert, so I will get on and talk to anyone, but I understand that not everyone will. I spend a lot of time doing "Hello! Nice to hear you on the repeater!" types of calls, and "introducing" new folks to the others who are talking -- just to get them to realize there's a new callsign there. I also force myself (as club President), to throw my callsign out on our systems (and bounce around) just so folks know I'm around if they need something. I also like playing with new tech -- I'd like to see a Colorado group start putting together a D-Star system somewhere -- but so far, the interest level is so low, I can't justify spending club funds on it. We have a few of us playing with a privately owned/operated P25 system too, but it's more a novelty than a useful thing right now. Other things I've always "wanted" to do but can't justify either the time or the money or the headaches, is to add voted receivers to the big system... so many people have HT's as their only rig nowadays, that making sure the receiver sensitivity is king over all else, seems to help usage. Nothing spells death for a QSO faster than a new ham trying to work a repeater 20 miles away in the mountains from an HT... Back to Denver -- we have an overabundance of repeaters and clubs. At one of our sites, I counted 7 ham UHF repeaters. There are also 3 VHF's up there. That's ten repeaters that have the exact same coverage! (But they definitely have different personality types on each repeater.) Three out of four of our sites have multiple ham repeaters (including our own) on them. Only one is "exclusive" to us, because of a long-standing agreement with the site owners. And even that is a long story... -- Nate Duehr, WY0X [EMAIL PROTECTED]
