also this range on the repeater is with a HT at 5 watts.
----- Original Message -----
From: Maire-Radios
To: Repeater-Builder@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, July 04, 2009 6:28 PM
Subject: Re: [Repeater-Builder] GM300 Crossband Ham repeater Bi-Directional
well I have a Kenwood TKR-751 and amp at 80 watts going into a DB-224 at 180
feet. no preamp, RC-210 controller and get about 20 miles from the tower.
there is something wrong with the repeater. It should get more coverage than
you say. Maybe a preamp on the receive will help. What is the reflected on
the unit? What kind of duplixer do you have?
John
----- Original Message -----
From: Nate Duehr
To: Repeater-Builder@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, July 04, 2009 5:16 PM
Subject: Re: [Repeater-Builder] GM300 Crossband Ham repeater Bi-Directional
On Jul 2, 2009, at 12:56 AM, Scott Yeager wrote:
> Wow, if this is attempting to be nice I can't even imagine what your
> idea of rude is.
>
Which part of my message was rude? Did you fall into the common
mistake that humans reading e-mails that are long think there's more
emotional content to them than there is? It's a well-documented
phenomenon, and I type over 80 WPM. Read it again.
Also, a bunch of people are whining that I called YOUR gear junk,
which I did NOT... they need to learn to read English, I guess. I
said clearly that I was talking about the TYPICAL cross-band repeater
setup, not yours.
You have the opportunity to build a good one that'll never bother the
main repeater operator, and I was sharing how frustrating and annoying
a BADLY done one is. It only takes one bad apple for the repeater
operator to say, "Screw it. This took up too much time hunting this
idiot down, we're going to ban these things from our repeater."
> Where to start?
>
> Well since I'm a DUE paying member of the club and the repeater
> belongs to THE CLUB, I'm part owner of it. This has also been
> discussed with the club and received no objection from a majority of
> the members.
>
No comment here. Good luck getting a judge to give you your share of
the money if they ever turn if off and sell it. "Ownership" doesn't
work that way under the law, but it doesn't matter for this
discussion. It's a business/legal question, unrelated to the need you
have to access the repeater.
> At least three other members in the club use dual band mobiles in
> their homes and make use of a dual band portable HT doing the EXACT
> SAME THING I'm attempting. Never once has this caused a problem.
> The repeater uses coded squelch on the input, transmits the tone
> 24/7 on the output and I planned on using TSQ on my 2m radio, along
> with DSQ on my 440 radio. Considering that my 2m radio would NEVER
> transmit unless I was keying it using my 250mw HT then theres no
> need for IT to ID. Oh and wouldn't it be so terrible to build a 555
> timer circuit to ID on the 440mhz unit every 10 minutes it was
> active with my call sign and maybe a message it was a crossband link?
>
Good, they're doing it right. You have to realize my comments were
from over a decade of seeing people do it wrong and frankly, being
tired of it.
People pop up on this list all the time asking vague "I want to link
to someone else's repeater" questions without even so much as talking
to the local repeater operator first. That's backwards.
As far as ID's go... plenty of people getting away with not doing it
for cross-band links, etc. I only asked you HOW your transmitter
would be ID'd, since people had already send you links to a cable
system that links GM300's and makes them into a cross-band repeater
that doesn't include a legal ID'er.
Part 97 clearly states that every transmitter must be ID'd. How you
do it, is up to you.
The fact that you know what a 555 timer is, puts you far up the curve
from the average new ham. It's not required knowledge on the test,
and the hobby is designed to bring in folks who know virtually nothing
about radio -- which is good for the hobby long-term, if they continue
learning -- so you're ahead of the game. How would I have known that
from your original posting? I wouldn't. Therefore the answer was
tailored to the lowest common denominator.
> Oh and I'm so terribly sorry to inconvinence YOU with the fact that
> I'm a highly active member of a radio club whos repeater is nearly
> 10 miles away from my house "as the crow flies" and I'd like the
> convinence of using my low powered HT to, I don't know, TALK TO
> PEOPLE!? My front porch is at 1025 feet, the base of the water
> tower is at 1014 feet, stands 274 feet high and our antenna is a
> high gain repeater specific antenna on a mast 23 feet from the TOP
> of the tower. Using a VX7R and Diamond HRH77CA on full five watts I
> can NOT key the repeater.
>
A repeater 10 miles away that can't hear a 5W HT has a receiver
sensitivity or noise problem. Perhaps your time/effort would be
better spent helping the repeater club fix that?
Being a "highly active" repeater user means little. Being a highly
active repeater builder/worker, holds more challenge and interest for
you long-term. All someone has to do or know to be a highly active
repeater user is to pick up the phone and order an HT, put a frequency
into it and mush the PTT. Big whoop.
Don't get me wrong, I like repeater users -- but claiming it's as good
as the guy who climbed the tower, found the bad hardline, spliced it,
measured the repeater's usable receiver sensitivity and found that you
raised the coverage of the repeater significantly -- well, I'll buy
one of those two people dinner, and it won't be the guy in his
basement talking on his HT.
Think about how silly that statement sounds compared to the years some
of the repeater building folks have spend on this list honing their
skills in optimizing their repeaters, and it looks pretty silly. This
is the Repeater-Builder list, after all... not the "I've got a cross-
bander in my car" list.
Call it my standard "challenge"... instead of engineering a solution
to only YOUR problem... work on the repeater.
> I guess you're just not getting the point of what I'm attempting to
> do here or something. You seem to think there are plenty of ways to
> get around my problem without using a "cross band pile of garbage"
> but I HIGHLY doubt you could come up with even ONE *REALISTIC* idea
> of solving this problem. I might be a newly licensed Ham, but I'm
> not NEW by any means to RF, electronics, nor am I an idiot.
>
You assume I can't fix the problem because you didn't ASK me how to
solve your problem, you asked if cross-band linking into the repeater
was a good idea. Ask if you want ideas on how to hit a far-away
repeater. I believe I said that before... gosh, I'm soooo rude. Ask.
Let's see... I operate (along with my club) or work on more than seven
IRLP nodes, have installed hundreds of others, have a VHF/220 linked
repeater system that covers the entire Front Range of Colorado, a D-
STAR Gateway for another club, and who knows what else... yeah, I'm
ALL out of ideas here on how to link things... maybe you can help me?
Who's making the assumptions here?
> Sorry but I'm not going to walk around my hosue with a 25' whip on
> the end of my HT FFS.
>
Have you even tried a 1/4 wave flexible antenna? The gain figures of
such an antenna smoke the typical factory rubber duck.
> Like I said, if you were attempting to be nice you've failed
> miserably. I on the other hand just don't care anymore, nor am I
> attemting to be nice in return. The replies I've received from this
> thread have actually proven the resource of this message board to be
> compeltely useless to me and I'll be removing my membership to it.
> Thanks for helping me see I was just wasting my time on here.
>
Didn't know I was supposed to guarantee you the answer you wanted to
hear. You asked for advice on a public list, and you got it.
Have you talked to the repeater owner/operator yet about it? If they
say "go for it", my opinion is null and void. And it was line number
TWO in my response. All the other stuff aside, if you're building a
repeater to link to someone else's repeater, you owe them at LEAST a
courtesy phone call to see if that's okay with them.
Please note that in all the responses you got, not a single large
linked-system repeater operator replied. They all know even answering
is a losing proposition with all the non-repeater-building folks
joining in the fray on this list. You may want to watch carefully for
a while and see who's actually got repeaters and who's just making
noise here in "support" of your position. Plenty of hams on this list
who'll join a controversial discussion with zero knowledge of the topic.
Bottom-line: Can you build a crossband link to a repeater, yes. Can
you do it right? Up to you. Does the local repeater owner like/want
that? Only you can find out, no mailing list on the Internet can
possibly answer that question. Are you a smart guy who can build
things that work? Only you know. Should my opinion of your cross-
band setup matter in the slightest? Not really. But you ASKED.
Don't want answers and opinions, don't ask. Last I looked, we're all
human.
--
Nate Duehr, WY0X
n...@natetech.com
