On Mon, 23 Mar 2009, Eric Lemmon wrote: > Perhaps it would serve the public interest better if the actual > document were presented, rather than a copy of the text. See the > attached.
> 5 The Commission revised the definition in order to clarify that > certain accommodations for message forwarding systems do not apply to > other operating activities such as repeaters and auxiliary stations. 6 > The Commission proposed to define a repeater as "[a]n amateur station > that instantaneously retransmits the transmission of another amateur > station on a different channel or channels," but ultimately replaced > "instantaneously" with "simultaneously" because commenters noted 2. > that there is always a small propagation delay through a repeater. 7 > As one commenter explained, "The word `simultaneously' in this case > means that the repeater is receiving and transmitting concurrently, > whereas each signal might be slightly displaced in time between > receive and transmit." 8 To be able to repeat another station's > transmission, a repeater must be able to receive a transmission from > another station and retransmit it. Because the word "simultaneously" > in the definition is used to modify "retransmit," we believe it refers > to a repeater station's transmitter being active when retransmitting > the signal received by the repeater station's receiver from another > amateur station. We conclude, therefore, that "simultaneously" as used > in the definition of a repeater refers to the receiver and transmitter > both being active at the same time. The only interesting wrinkle in this is that a linear transponder doesn't "retransmit". The signal is never decoded to baseband and retransmitted. Or is it? With I+Q demodulation and remodulation, this could be a point of argument. -- Kris Kirby, KE4AHR Disinformation Analyst
