At 11:25 PM 09/11/08, Nate Duehr, WY0X wrote: > >(big chunk cut out) > >We feed Vol/Sq Hi into the S-Com's with the de-emphasis capacitor >recommended by them added at the receiver input inside the 7K... the >audio "inside" the controller is de-emphasized "normal" audio... and >then back out into the normal audio inputs of the MASTR II... none of >the "flat-audio" stuff that some larger west coast and other groups >have done. Search the list archives for "flat-audio" to see some >AMAZINGLY good engineering discussions about how to accomplish a REAL >what-goes-in-is-what-comes-out setup... over multiple hops. > >Out here, so far we're just not that picky. But we understand why >LARGE linked systems do it... they're fighting that little bit of >audio quality loss at each "hop" in the linked system... and they HAVE >to get ultra-aggressive about not lowering audio quality by even a >TINY bit at each hop, or by the time you're five hops away in links, >it starts to sound bad.
Five? Try over a dozen... And sometimes double or even triple that. See <http://www.cactus-intertie.org/CIS_Map.htm> and count the hops from Los Angeles to Santa Fe NM. Then do a hop count from Carson City NV to Corpus Christi, TX or even to Austin. I've heard a conversation on the LA to Santa Fe path, and you'd swear that the guy in NM was on the local machine (except for the squelch tails when the links drop - and BTW the controllers and the links are all full duplex). Remember every solid red line is an RF hop, and every dot is a repeater. Some of the systems are VERY complex, just count the lines going into a dot and then add the local UHF repeater port(s) and the remote base port(s) as they aren't shown. The dashed lines are non-RF hops (some are piggybacked on corporate T-1s). And Nate - they're getting closer and closer to Denver .... That map is from Feb of this year. Mike WA6ILQ
