Paul - KCØHST wrote: > Where they are used, what is a typical example of a remote control > system for a repeater? In other words, to provide the ability to > shutdown the repeater remotely, by means other than the input.
Yep. Or reprogram things, or whatever. Used to be required by law, many ages ago. Law still seems to lean toward anyone operating a repeater to have alternate means of "control" besides the repeater input, so they're good engineering practice to have, always. > I think this has been touched on briefly in the past here but I was > unable to find anything in the archives. Search for "control receiver". > Specifically, what about the receiver antenna connection? We have > access to only one feedline connection. If the control receiver is in > the same band as the repeater (VHF in this case) could a divider be > used off of the duplexer RX port to connect to the remote control RX? > Would a cavity be needed also? All depends on your site. At one site, we have a receive multicoupler for two UHF repeaters, and we take another port of that for a control receiver. At others, we have phone lines. At still another, we have link radios that we can "talk to" the site through, including muting what we're doing out the main repeater port, etc. Not too hard to get creative. I've seen people put 1/4 wave antennas right on the top of their cabinets and not out on the tower at really high sites. Receive only, they work fine if you blow decent power (50W mobile or home radio) toward the mountain for control purposes, and sometimes even an HT can get into them, all depends on what you're using for control receivers. We're using old MASTR PRO stuff... decent front-end (selectivity) and they rack mount decently... > As for the rest of the system, my inclination would be to use a DTMF > decoder output to control the PTT line. ??? Can't your repeater controller handle the PTT line? > Any input is appreciated. Describe what you're trying to accomplish. Easier to engineer with specifications, than to guess. Nate WY0X
