Ken, now you've gone and done it...that metallic "clank" was the sound of the lid from the can of worms hitting the floor!
Well...let's start with the premise that any coordination board is probably going to attract primarily existing repeater ops as members, and hand them a sort of monarchy. Is there a bigger conflict of interest than that? It ticks me off to see a coordinator hoarding unbuilt "paper repeaters" while others with real machines and sites ready to go are kept off the air. The whole premise of assigning a 15- or 20kHz-wide chunk of spectrum to one individual who's using it less than 1% of the time violates the spirit of the amateur service, IMHO. The FCC doesn't allow a local volunteer coordinator to reserve 3885 kHz SSB for you, or a VHF simplex frequency for that matter. This isn't like commercial services where you have to be assigned a frequency to have a practical system. The public interest would be best served by allowing as many hams as possible the experience of building, maintaining and operating a repeater, not by saving a seat in a crowded theater. There should never be a waiting list for repeater coordination in the amateur service. Utah has a 440 frequency which is designated as shared with no protection, and it's occupied by five repeaters. Some other states have "backyard/test" pairs, as well. There could be a compromise position between the two extremes. Sharing a frequency pair by day of the week would be easy with modern controllers with schedulers. If the two repeaters had vastly different coverage areas, make them user selectable, and revert to that day's default repeater on a 10-minute "end of activity" timer. You know someone would do this...get together 7 guys to share one pair, and build a central computer system to automate control of which machine of the 7 came up based on time of day, which receiver voted, PL tone, etc. Other guys would build synchronous transmitters with voting receivers, so both could be on at once. This wouldn't be as hard to introduce as it sounds. All you'd have to do is accept applications from licensees who proposed to share a frequency pair, and give shared applications preference over single applicants. Require applicants to spell out the terms under which they propose to share the frequency, so the coordinator would have a documented set of rules should issues arise. Immediately, applicants on the waiting list would be on the phone with one another, lining up partners. Make continued sharing by those who originally filed that way a requirement to hold the coordination. If you're left alone on a pair, you contact the coordinator for a new partner, and maybe you get one who's been in a three-way sharing arrangement on another pair. If you have an agreement with someone to share a pair, and he doesn't honor it, call the coordinator and forfeit the coordination for both of you, and go back into the pool. You'd have partners striving to maintain good references, so they could easily find partners, and bad partners would be left filing singly, waiting at the back of the list. Grandfathered one-per-pair coordinations would open up to the shared system whenever there was a change in licensee/callsign. Anyone unwilling to partner (or unable due to bad references from screwing over previous partners) could build a repeater on a band with no waiting list. We'd end up with redundant hardware backing up every pair on 2m and many on 440, (probably 1.2 in parts of CA,) and everyone with a repeater would have an incentive to work together. The downside is...what? Used duplexers would go up in price? The licensee would not longer be able to show up at club meetings with a name tag that read simply, ".76"? If we find a way to get rid of the waiting list, the coordinator's position changes dramatically, and the corrupting influences are greatly reduced. No more sucking up for years, having to join the right club, or pay a coordinator thousand of dollars for one of his "paper repeaters" to get yours on the air. Other than that, I think the current system works fine. 73, Paul, AE4KR ----- Original Message ----- From: JOHN MACKEY To: [email protected] Sent: Saturday, December 22, 2007 12:42 PM Subject: Re: [Repeater-Builder] NFCC cordination foo Ken- You are correct. It was/is not the ENTIRE ORRC board that is less than ethical, but certainly several of the board members have been what you call "downright crooked"!! ------ Original Message ------ Received: Sat, 22 Dec 2007 02:31:35 PM CST From: Ken Arck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Repeater-Builder] NFCC cordination foo > At 12:22 PM 12/22/2007, you wrote: > > >So what happens if a coordinator or coordination body violates the code of > >ethics? > > > >I've seen the Oregon Region Relay Council violate these ethics many times. > > <---Well in all fairness, only certain individuals who were Board > members (or Chairman) of the ORRC were less than ethical. Ok, some > were downright crooked. > > Then again, it ain't exactly rocket science that politics plays a big > part in the operations of many ham coordination groups. > > Ken > >
