Text 28469, 134 rader
Skriven 2012-05-08 00:52:04 av Richard Webb (1:116/901.0)
  Kommentar till text 28460 av Roy Witt (1:387/22)
Ärende: unsullied places, wa
============================
Hi Roy,

On Mon 2012-May-07 04:14, Roy Witt (1:387/22) wrote to Richard Webb:

 RW> YEp, pretty much the rest of the country is positive offset except
 RW> Cali iirc.

RW> Being that the majority of repeaters in use are/were commercial
RW> radios removed from that service and frequency converted for HAM use
RW> and are already regulated for clean emissions and tuned for
RW> non-interference, the positive offset of the repeater being close to
RW> the band edge made more sense to the CA coordinating body. I felt
RW> that my repeater was well within the specs since I had a friend who
RW> was a business radio service tech who had the equipment to tune my
RW> cavities and the radio itself. Like his, mine was one of the
RW> cleanest HAM repeaters in the area.

YEp, guy who set mine up for me was also a business radio
tech, he did public service repeaters' maintenance and
servicing.  A buddy and I reroofed his house in trade.  I
paid the buddy <g>.

 RW> We had plans to add a 2m remote base to it and some other stuff.
 RW> Think I bought the duplexer off the ham echo in fact.

RW> The person who owned my repeater before me had to wild dreams as
RW> well. In fact part of it was already included in what I got with it.
RW> I removed it because I had no illusions of ever taking it that far.

YEah this would have been a simple remote base, simplex
single freq, jsut for our band of fellow travels, maybe
fancier later, but even that didn't come to fruition.  iT
had a crude 3 min time out timer and no identifier even, you had to voice id it
when you used it.  A real controller and
the like was in its future, but we were all poor boys.

 RW> Blake Bowers comes to mind, but I may be wrong, as they say, I slept
 RW> since then.

Roy> Blake was a good man...we had lots of conversations in HAM before
RW> Edmonson broke up the subject with his constant whining about 'off
RW> topic' in that echo.

<rotfl>  Yeah don't remember JEff as I think i commented,
but i liked Blake, and some other regulars in that echo back then.

 RW> There were some good locations for rural folks, grain bins and the
 RW> like.

Roy> The problem with grain bins or silos for that matter is the nitric
RW> acid gas buildup. Silage (alfalfa, etc) tends to ferment and create
RW> an explosive gas that is not only toxic for mankind to breath, but
RW> any small spark could ignite it. If you put electronics in that
RW> building, the possibility of lightning striking the silo is more
RW> likely than not. 

YEah I know.  I'd heard of that happening.  Some folks used
'em anyway.  I had enough other ideas for good sites, we
were using the steep of the church I attended while growing
up, it was fairly high ground but there were better sites.

 RW> One of my band of fellow travelers was a member of the big catholic
 RW> church that had a great footprint from its steeple, and I think they
 RW> all hinged their hopes on him getting that church steeple site, but I
 RW> told them I'd just give it up to 'em if they had a place to put it.
 RW> Since they didn't I sold the whole mess, duplexers to one guy,
 RW> repeater to another, rack to the third.  I kept the backup batteries
 RW> <g>.

Roy> I used to be the care-taker of a local club repeater and wished the
Roy> members could see their way to buy some backup batteries for that
Roy> repeater. It went off the air several times during my tenure and
Roy> making a trip to and fro the site to reset the PS was a PIA. 45
Roy> minutes one way to change out a blown fuse wasn't worth my time.
Roy> Cleaning out a dead mouse who tripped over the PS caps was even
Roy> worse.

YEah we all pooled our money to do that part.  i wouldn't do a repeater without
backup batteries.  In fact, after awhile
we float charged the batteries off a small power supply, but the repeater ran
exclusively from them.  Two 30 amp/hour
gels iirc.  IT didn't get used that much so we were alright
with that.

 RW>>>> Whatever Pave Paw is/was, it was discussed over 5 years ago in
 RW>>>> some ham blogs, but nobody seemed to be worried about it then.
<snip>
 Roy>> you just put up with the Navy radar installations or went to a
 Roy>> different band. VHF repeaters are a dime a dozen there and so are
 Roy>> the 220 and 440 repeaters now.

 RW> YEah I know.  There was still room in the 440 mhz band in
 RW> IOwa back when I had mine, but they were crying about
 RW> running out of pairs to coordinate, yet it took me 4 years,
 RW> I'd lived in NEw Orleans for two of 'em before i convinced
 RW> the frequency coordinators to delist my coordination.

Roy> Sheesh...if that was California, they'd have 5 or 6 guys on the
Roy> waiting list who would be notified the instant your request arrived.

YEah I know, but this was the hinterlands, but they
eventually got around to it.

 RW> They'd send me letters warning that anything not active and
 RW> on the air was going to lose its coordination and a form to
 RW> fill out, I'd send the form back basically telling them they could
 RW> have the pair back, it was open, and 6 months later I'd get another
 RW> letter, same thing.

Roy> LOL! We'd have coordination meetings called for the issuance of a
Roy> pair and everybody who had an app on file would be there, fighting
Roy> to get it.

There was supposedly a coordinating organization, but the
paperwork was basically one guy, a busy surgeon, and he got
around to it when he got around to it.  YOu guys out west
had your coordination ducks in a row a lot better than we
did in the upper midwest back then.

 RW> Finally I got with a friend who worked with the guy who was head of
 RW> the coordinating entity and told himto deal with it.  Next repeater
 RW> directory came out finally didn't have me listed <g>.

RW> That wasn't a problem in CA...if you took your system off the air,
RW> there would be another one up the next day to fill the empty gap.

Yep, see above.  You guys had a lot more demand than we did
in the boondocks.


Regards,
           Richard
---
 * Origin:  (1:116/901)