[Repeater-Builder] Repeater Bells and Whistles (from an off group source)
I received the below text from a non group member... who was at one time very active in Amateur Repeaters. His opinion and some technical ideas... enjoy, s. [pasted text] In my repeater days I went both ways. Started by wanting to add anything that showed the repeater to be more advanced. We had custom-recorded audio IDs, and at one point, over 500 repeaterisms - semi-humourous statements read in any of several celebrity voices...most had to do with repeaters, like Talkest thou not excessive in length, lest the timepiece of the gods shuttest thou up, in a Charlton Heston-esque voice. Some were mere clips from 60s-era TV I'm tryin' to think but nothin's happenin! in Curly's voice, etc. But in truth, none can be very long and we grew tired, in just a few months, of the sound bites. The system we ended up with in Kalamazoo that I liked best was simple plus diagnostics. We had a courtesy beep and it was the diagnostic reporter. If the incoming signal was more than 500Hz low in carrier frequency, then the beep started at normal pitch, then dropped a whole step. At larger offsets in frequency, the beep dropped further in pitch. High frequency carriers would engender a pitch shift upwards. Of course, this was in the days when most rigs were controlled by a separate xtal per channel, therefore having one of them off, but the others correct wasn't uncommon. For users who were over-deviated, the courtesy beep got louder and was square-wave modulated at 100Hz...a raspy sound. For users whose modulation measured low, the courtesy beep beeped, that is, it went to a series of dits that slowed down until they stopped. The diagnostic mode was enabled any time the repeater had gone more than ten minutes without a transmission of over a minute in length. We had implemented a voice back mode where the repeater played back the last 15 seconds of a received transmission, so people could hear the actual sound of their audio, but not a lot of users liked it, so we shut it off. Nowadays, I just notice what repeaters do or don't do. Around here, it seems that simplicity is the buzzword. A simple courtesy beep is the most any of them seem to have. The exception is that some of them use a voice ID and indicate what the correct subaudible tone to use is. Back in SR, a couple of the local repeaters also had the occasional voice announcement indicating club meeting times/dates and when the club net occurred on the repeater.
Re: [Repeater-Builder] Repeater Bells and Whistles (from an off group source)
At 11/3/2009 11:05, you wrote: I love the notion of the courtesy beep as a diagnostic tool, provided it doesn't distract from the content of the traffic. When I was working on repeaters for the Blue Ridge Amateur Radio Society in the Carolinas in the '80s, we were transitioning to CTCSS, but ran the Paris Mountain repeater in carrier-squelch mode except during periods of interference. Because users were trying everything from actual PL reeds to 555 chips as encoders, I programed the SCOM 6K to reverse the high-to-low courtesy beep on transmissions with correctly decoded tones, so users would know if their tones were good even during periods of carrier access. One of the first open CTCSS repeaters here in SoCal (WR6AQD Santiago Peak 145.22) used CTCSS to key the repeater, but the actual receiver squelch was still carrier. Since the hang time was ~3.5 seconds, you didn't need much CTCSS or exactly the right frequency to get through. It was easy to tell who's CTCSS encoders were off frequency, injected into the mic input, etc. by all the courtesy tones going off during the users' transmissions. Bob NO6B
Re: [Repeater-Builder] Repeater Bells and Whistles (from an off group source)
I recall the repeaters of the ACC era, how the overused bells and whistles were viewed as advanced, and how so many repeaters coast-to-coast had no individual personalities, only those same canned TI voices and LOUD three-tone courtesy beeps. I also recall how funny it was to hear the male and female robots programmed to argue with each other...until about the 100th play. Digital voice recordings are much nicer to hear than the 'bots, and can reflect local accents and character, but I shake my head every time I hear an inattentive CQ-er start a conversation with the automated ID playback. I love the notion of the courtesy beep as a diagnostic tool, provided it doesn't distract from the content of the traffic. When I was working on repeaters for the Blue Ridge Amateur Radio Society in the Carolinas in the '80s, we were transitioning to CTCSS, but ran the Paris Mountain repeater in carrier-squelch mode except during periods of interference. Because users were trying everything from actual PL reeds to 555 chips as encoders, I programed the SCOM 6K to reverse the high-to-low courtesy beep on transmissions with correctly decoded tones, so users would know if their tones were good even during periods of carrier access. It was subtle, but if you were listening for it, you could easily hear the difference. (I tried to approximate the in-band cue signals used on the old Mutual Broadcast Network, a very distinctive, but low-level bee-doop.) One member apparently didn't read the club newsletter to know about the feature, but noticed one day on the air that he had a high-low beep, while the members of the tech committee had the opposite, low-to-high pitch. He asked why it was different. My partner on the committee told him the repeater knows who daddy is. I was less charitable...I told him it was an IQ detector. I like hearing a Morse letter as a courtesy beep to identify which of the voted receivers or linked repeaters was just heard, provided they're quick and not too loud. Beyond that, except for ancillary functions which can be requested by a user for just that moment, and perhaps an unsolicited readback to identify a serious techical deficiency with a signal just heard, I'm a fan of less is more. 73, Paul, AE4KR - Original Message - From: skipp025 To: Repeater-Builder@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 10:46 AM Subject: [Repeater-Builder] Repeater Bells and Whistles (from an off group source) In my repeater days I went both ways. Started by wanting to add anything that showed the repeater to be more advanced. We had custom-recorded audio IDs, and at one point, over 500 repeaterisms - semi-humourous statements read in any of several celebrity voices... .
