Keith, Those are all good ideas.
Don't forget there are 10M repeaters outside of the US also use the same bandplan. Instead or writing to the coordinators, write to the repeater owners and try to get everyone on the same page. Just crunching some numbers. There are about 100 10M repeaters in the US. If the rest of the US is like our area, about half of those are not on the air. So that leave 50 repeaters for 4 pairs, that's about 12 per pair. Since we can't get "two" repeater owners to agree on anything, getting 12 would be pretty tough. So another method would be needed. Crunching in the other way, of the 100 repeaters, about 75% were listed at having tone. So not counting the paper repeaters, it looks like 25 TS-64s would solve the problem. Create a "Help Save The 10M Repeaters" group and take up some donations. You only need about $1500 and you "give" one to all the repeater owners that don't have tone a unit. Start off with a nice letter to the owners (without tone) explaining the problem and how they can get their "Free" tone unit. I bet you'd get most of them to cooperate. Just some alternative thinking. Start now, the band will be open in a couple years! Dwayne Kincaid WD8OYG > > Since I instigated it, I thought I would start a new thread. > There seems to be a lot of interest in this, but lets keep it calm > and POSITIVE, and if a moderator wants to shut it down, fine. > > 1. I just remember how much fun it was when the band was open working > numerous FM repeaters at the same time to make many contacts!! > This was ruined by the repeaters that were running CARRIER squelch > and had LONG hang times or remote bases with POOR (or no) > receivers!!! > > 2. I would like to see more repeater pairs and wider splits, BUT I > THINK WE NEED TO CLEAN UP THE CURRENT REPEATERS FIRST to prove it can > work! > > 3. I think there needs to be National coordination and enforcement. > As an OO, I would like to give some positive encouragement to those > that need to clean up their repeaters! > > So there seem to be 2 "national coordinators"; > http://www.arrl.org/nfcc/ > http://www.thenfcc.org/ > Do they care about 10m repeaters? > Should I email ALL of them? > Would OO cards stating "good engineering practice" help? > > ... or give up and enjoy the Magic Band!! > ... Keith WE6R 51.76 (51.26 in) PL 114.8 encode AND decode!! >
