I have a Link RLC-1 and a RLC-1 Plus. They are nice controllers and very durable. I acquired the RLC-1 from a friend of mine that had it installed at 3 different sites. One site took a direct lightning hit (nothing was grounded), controller survived. The RLC-1 is a lot of controller. If you want a lot of bells and whistles, timers, schedulers, etc, the RLC-1 Plus is really nice; and if you liked the way the old RC-96 sounded, you can make this one sound like it (Link bought the remains of ACC). Both controllers can also be setup to run two separate repeaters as well. Hope this helps.
73, Terry KM5UQ From: Steve Jones <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Fri, July 16, 2010 9:13:49 AM Subject: [Repeater-Builder] Controller recommendations Hello all. I'm looking at replacing an MSR2000 and homebuilt controller with a Quantar and commercially built controller. Last controller I played with was an RC96 so it's been a while. The repeater setup is pretty simple. VHF MSR2000 with a simple courtesy beep and CW id'er. Two 5 DTMF digit commands allow us to turn the repeater on and off. The controller acknowledges the commands with a simple CW "R". There's a UHF link (MCX100) down to a hub repeater which allows linking to other repeaters. The VHF repeater can be linked from the local side or the UHF link side. Two 3 digit commands allow us to turn the link on or off. The link has a 5 minute inactivity timer that takes the link down if nobody is using it from the local VHF side. Two additional 5 digital DTMF commands allow us to make the link permanent and remove it. This is used during Canwarn operations. The courtesy beep changes to a boop during local activity while the link is up. During linkup, the last 3 letters of the callsign are sent on the link and the local side as an acknowledgement the link is up. That's it. Pretty simple system that has been in use about 10 years now. The only reason to change it out at this point is to add another P25 capable repeater to the area. I'd like to keep the current functionality and possibly add a Weather Alert function. I have a remote serial port available at the site for programming. Some sort of command line interface would be best. I've looked at some of the Link Communications products and I've heard good things about them. Any other recommendations? Thanks, -- Steve <steve.jones at rogers.com> VE3XF
