SERA Wants All Repeaters Toned!

Actually, I'm a bit flabbergasted by the supposed "Mandate".

After reading this in the SERA Repeater Journal, my only  question would be to the currently elected SERA brass who voted for this is...

Why wasn't this ill conceived notion put forth in the form of a comment period of say six to nine months to the repeater owners and trustees who have repeaters coordinated to see how everybody feels about the idea?      

That's what the FCC does before it makes a "rule" we all have to abide by afterall and this topic is so controversial that a comment period would have been more than appropriate.  Now all the SERA folks will be catching grief because of it.

The SERA board has to remember these are the same repeater owners (myself included) who help keep SERA afloat so there can be money available to produce a quality publication such as the Repeater Journal and help the coordinators with small things like being reimbursed for postage and phone calls.

All in all, these guys do a super job with repeater coordination and it IS a VOLUNTEER job.  But this was a decision that really wasn't thought out very carefully in my opinion and it appears to me that it was rushed through to a vote with blinders on.  I know there were comments against the proposal at the meeting made by some in attendance, but it was voted for anyway and that was a shame.

Don't get me wrong, I believe tone encode and decode has its place in amateur radio FM repeaters.  I have to have it on my 224.860 repeater in Virginia because of interference and I'm fine with that and the users who are on 220 are okay with it too.  Unless the urge hits me and I want to do it of my own free will, I won't put tone on the output of my repeater just because somebody in a southern SERA state wants me to do it.  In the famous of words of "41", "Not gonna do it."

Recommending a selection of CTCSS tones to use in different SERA regions is a good (no, make that outstanding) idea in case tone HAS to be used either by choice or necessity of the repeater owner, but it shouldn't be mandated.  Interference issues is often times such a big soup of complicated things that sometimes just one solution doesn't fit all.  And if we tone everything coming and going, then we mask many problems that may exist or crop up and what good does that do anybody?

I would suggest that tone be used where approptiate or desired.  And if tone has to be used, many controllers these days also offer the option of DTMF access when a repeater is toned.  SERA should make a recommendation of a standard SERA-wide DTMF sequence which will allow the traveling mobiles to operate repeaters without having to worry about looking up a repeaters' tone or programming it into the radio for that matter while driving.  

This idea may not solve everything because some controllers may not have the capability to do so and I understand that could be a problem.  However, I have that capability with my CAT 1000 and would gladly program it as such if it aids public motor safety.

I would encourage the SERA board to revisit this issue at their very next meeting because they have created a very bad vibe that is rippling through its membership.

73,

Mark
KQ4Q

 

Why don't you place that reply where the sun don't shine?

How many hams have performed invaluable public service, e.g. emergency comm, with nothing more than homebrew rigs from the junkbox?

And I suppose that entire dozen (and many more) that you refer to all live in Greensboro!  And I know them all personally!  

Amateur Radio is NO place for the arrogant, or the commercial.  Reread Part 97, if you ever bothered to read it in the first place!  I interpret your reply that you believe that selected Amateur bands should be relegated to CB'ers.  NEVER!!!

Wake up and smell the coffee OM, or go back to the Children's Band on eleven meters, where the likes of you will find a comfortable home.

And just to set the record straight, I was part owner of one of the repeater groups that founded CVRA. They did not coordinate our frequency, nor did they assign our frequency pair- WE COORDINATED THEIRS!  We managed to erect that repeater, with a Ringo Ranger at 450 feet above average terrain, for less money than what this idiot recommends I spend on a CTCSS encoder!  GET REAL!

I will repeat my salient points for those who must be reminded:

1) The SERA has NO authority to mandate CTCSS

2) If there is an interference issue suggesting CTCSS (which CTCSS WILL NOT cure) then there are simply to many repeaters on the same channel, located to close together- this situation is de facto PROOF that SERA has failed at its job,  PERIOD.  (That is, unless the job of SERA is to rake in $$$, which I believe to be quite apparent.)

3) SERA MUST BE REPLACED!

Mike
WD4DUG

 

Again it is proven that repeater coordinators really serve no purpose except to themselves. A self serving lot. That is why I so very rarely use a repeater except for the one sponsered by the club My YL and I belong to. It has a CTCSS tone on it sloely because we are close to a Canadien repeater using the same frequency pair. Seems that here in the Northeast we can all get along. SERA could use some lessons; we too have frequency accessed repeaters and we all get along. I guess the use of 6 meters, 222, 440 or 1.2 Ghz in some areas would be too difficult if 2 meters is so crowded. There is logic to the technology; it just has to be used.

 

WD4DUG ,  Mike i could not have said it any better,Tone is really not the issue here but the forced mandate that (They think is best)Russia maybe,not in Tennessee and hopfully not in the other states affected by this stupid move by SERA!!
Cut their money off and kick them out

 

I type again....CTCSS (tone, pl, sub-audible) is a TOOL.

If SERA has a vested interest beyond coordination, they should supply $$'s or equipment to amateurs within the "mandated" area to effect this edict. If not, it should be up to the repeater owner(s)/club that operate the repeater(s) to choose whether or not to require CTCSS for access.

Repeater coordinators recommend and annotate, for record, operational parameters of a given repeater within a specific area. They are not GOD, and are subject to law, not the essence of law.

Once again, 'tone' is not a tool to used to saturate an area with repeaters on the same pair.

Coordinators need to grow some @#$%^, and coordinate 'first come, first established'....and 'Johnny come lately' will have to PROVE: 1) the need or 'user base' for another machine, same pair, within or adjacent to an already established machine 2) non-interferrence operation under 'normal conditions' (propagation is still an undefined science) and 3) if a legacy machine is on the air...RESPONSE TO A COORDINATION RENEWAL IN A TIMELY FASHION OR NOT...don't change the rules...the machine has not CEASED TO EXIST...the user base has not CEASED to exist...don't penalize the user base by mandating to the repeater owner.

BTW, for those wondering (and have emailed me)...no I don't have time to be a coordinator. I am active duty Army. And after I retire, I will volunteer and support my hobby as much as can be tolerated....to the extent of the Amateur's Code. Furthermore, YES, I own a repeater. It is not on the air do to my transient occupation.

 

I dont see the big deal. The ARCC-INC which coordinates repeaters for
Eastern Pennsylvania and part of New Jersey came up with the realization this was needed 2 years ago.
I know of 2 hams that said they couldn't make PL work with their
radios when I switched mine on. Within 20 minutes and 2 $ 14.00
PL boards they were back in the loop.

 

A Google search found only ONE tone encoder that is switchable for multiple repeaters.  It is $129, not $29.  Single tone, if you are only going to use one repeater (who does that anymore???) is $36 to $40.  For a kit - if you are willing to cut into your rig.  And the above cost is just to continue using a repeater, not for any gain or advantage to the purchaser!  I think that is a major point of cost - money spent and no benefit to the spender.

Less than a dozen in the Southeast with non-tone rigs?  Balderdash!  There are dozens in my area alone! There are hundreds with non-tone rigs, if they live where repeaters are open and they had no need to purchase the tone boards when the rig was new. VHF radios do not wear out in 5 years!

So in the Southeast, where the mandate is in place, has fewer tone-capable rigs than areas where tones have been required in the past.  The same would logically be true wherever the population density is low (or where there are very capable coordinators).

All of the above still doesn't help the traveler with a brand new rig.

Again, the issue is someone pushing an unnecessary impedement to operation, where it is not needed or wanted.  The decision to use or not use tones should rest with the repeater owner, who can decide based on actual conditions.

 

I was wondering how long it would take for someone to start yelling CB. Sun don't shine? Nice.

Dude, have you read anything I have said?

So let me get this straight. You built a repeater, with a single antenna (which would require a duplexer) for $29? Sounds like MacGyver fantasies to me.

In 1970, a lot of hams used homebuilt rigs (well, not so many, really..except for lots of Heathkits), today, practically none. When one can buy a Yaesu VX-150 for $119, and a FT-2800M for $159 (Texas Towers prices), it's impractical, unless you are an old-school die-hard ham. In that case, install an encode board for your project.

Are folks in Greensboro using 20+ year old radios? There are some really great deals out there. See paragraph above. My first portable, a Yaesu FT-208R, cost over $500, and yes, tone capability for this radio was optional. This was around 1980. But then in 1980, Knoxville had only a handful of repeaters. The nine memories that beast sported was MORE than adequate. That would be woefully insuffiecent today. My, how technology has changed! Another thing, this radio was the size (and weight too, I might add) of a brick.

The only 2 meter radio I ever built was a Heathkit HW-2036A back in 1978. It could generate three CTCSS tones as designed. You want to see a $29 CTCSS encoder? For the third time, http://www.com-spec.com and go to the Communications Specialists section, and look up the SS-64. $28.95. Yeah, you will require soldering skills to install it, but if you put a repeater on the air for $29, this will be a cakewalk. This project requires very basic skills. Oh, and if you noticed their deluxe TS-64 while on your way in, for a mere $54.95 you can include DECODE as well! Yes, a little more skill involved, but we ARE hams, right?

Been a ham for over 30 years myself, as well as 10 years in commercial communications maintenance, including three years as a FTR (Factory Technical Rep) for Motorola C&E. The last time I was on CB was before the mass invasion around 1973, so I couldn't imagine that I would be very comfortable there from what I hear about it.

Yes, it's true that before coordination took place, one could pick a frequency and go on the air, but even then, channel spacing standards were expected. In fact, if you go back far enough, only Advanced and Extra class hams could run a repeater. You even got a special repeater license for the repeater with its own call from the FCC. Mine was WR4AXD. All that meaningless crap aside, the way it works TODAY, you tell the coordinators where you plan to put your repeater, how high and what gain your antenna is, and what your calculated ERP is, and then they tell you what frequency you can use after they do an interference and overlap study. IF there's a frequency you can use. And don't expect anything on 2 meters unless you live in Wyoming. They use expensive software to illustrate the effective radiation pattern that a repeater given the parameters provided in the application would produce, then compare that to existing repeaters on or near a range of frequencies and their dBu patterns. They use this information to provide YOU a frequency pair that would cause the least interferance for your situation. That's why they call it "coordination". Similar processes are done for commercial systems. That's why the system works, and the amateur and commercial repeater bands aren't in total kaos, like the CB bands that you seem to be familar with are.

As for SERA's authority, as long as the FCC differs final judgement on the coordinating bodies, including SERA, then they are the defacto authority. Authority by proxy or delegation, if you will. You might push your complaint up to the ARRL, but the FCC clearly doesn't care.

Once again, you don't HAVE to be coordinated to run a repeater, so no one is infringing on your liberties, or your PRIVLIDGE to run a repeater (we ARE licensed for the service), but you WILL loose if you cause interference with a properly coordinated system, and today, proper coordination involves CTCSS encode and decode.

 

Another point, if you consider $50 for an add on board, just save up the extra $50 and GET A NEW RADIO. On the other hand, $54 isn't a bad price to add encode and decode to a repeater.

You really only need "encode" to access the repeater from the user's perspective.

It's still four months until Christmas!

 

This dicussion all seems to revolve around the possible or impossible. These are nice solid categories, but what about useability and transient friendliness.

My mobile and handheld rigs are newer and have good tone capabilities with one exception. Setting the tone frequencies for any frequency pair is an exercise that takes time and concentration. It is not something that can be done safely while driving.

The SERA decision now means that I will not be able to scan for possible contacts as I drive in their area. Even if I hear someone to contact, I won't be able to get back to them because I won't know the tone. Much of this and I will find something else to do. VHF FM is for fellowship and meeting new friends, not frustration.

Further all the tones do is keep the operator from hearing the garbage that is out there. Except in the case of repeater systems with multiple satellite receivers it doesn't keep extraneous signals from trashing the local signals. It just keeps the trash from opening the squelch when other signals aren't present. This may help time out problems. It doesn't help at the user end either for eliminating the effects of extraneous signals. It a non-toned signal is strong enough to cause interference it may even be strong enough to override the desired signal and keep the tone squelch closed. The interference will still be there, but you may think something has happened to the repeaters pattern since you can't hear anything.

Except for some not too common cases, tone squelch does nothing to reduce interference if the repeater users follow good Amateur practices and use the minimum power necessary for reliable communications. With most repeaters and locations this means 1 watt or maybe 5watts, but not 20 watts, 50 watts, or 75 watts.

 

Well,

    I've been an advocate of PL since the late 1970s.  I knew it was coming some day.  I guess that day is almost upon us.  

    Using PL would not eliminate but reduce interference a good bit.  No, it would not eliminate intermod or other types of interference.  It would reduce the amount of interference received from distant repeaters.  

    I remember the ends of the repeater wars at the end of the crystal controlled days.  146.94 was the first repeater in South Carolina (WR4ACD in Columbia, SC).  As time went by, repeaters showed up on 146.94 in Greenville and Charleston in SC,  Augusta in GA, and Charlotte in NC.  When the band would open, using 146.94 could be a bear.  The repeater would be chattering with conversation from an adjacent repeater.  This made it a pain to leave your receiver on just to monitor or try to get a conversation in without the repeater timing out because there was no release on the input of the repeater when you unkeyed.  
Using PL would have eliminated this problem.  

    Of course, this was in the days when a lot of folks still had crystal controlled radios.  Try to get them to move the repeater to another frequency?  Good luck.  There were PL kits available that could have easily been installed on those rigs but no one would even consider going PL back then.  

    I read an article about one repeater that did PL 'discrimination'.  They discriminated against the PL tone of the adjacent repeater.  If the PL tone was present, the repeater would not key.  If not, it would.  For this reason, that repeater was able to go open squelch for a longer period of time.  

    My only gripe with PL is that it makes it difficult to find a repeater when you are on the open road.  You'd have to try every PL frequency on each repeater pair to find a repeater.  But, that's why SERA publishes the list of operating repeaters in the Repeater Journal.  

    As far as SERA 'requiring' it, I suspect that's propaganda to get repeater owners to use it.  I don't see how they could enforce existing open squelch repeaters to add PL to their equipment.  Perhaps they could require it as a part of the coordination of new repeaters.  

    73,


                                Fred, WB4AEJ

 

It is quite obvious that you have some sort of axe to grind with SERA.  I suspect your frustrations lie with perhaps one or two individuals in North Carolina and not the whole organization.

Instead of complaining and spewing your hatred for SERA and for its disbandment , why don't you offer some sort of reasonable idea and help become a part of the solution?  Perhaps not only for the present CTCSS issue, but for other issues that you have found disagreeable through the years.

It's easy to sit back and complain, but it does take some extra effort on everybody's part to help be part of the solution.  We all share the airwaves and we all have to coexist peacefully in FM especially.  SERA is not going away, I hate to tell you that.  It is well respected in frequency coordination circles across the country and generally serves its member and non member repeaters well.  

If enough repeater owners/trustees speak out against the new policy with their coordinators, then I feel that the issue will be revisited (sooner than later) and a more acceptable stance will be adopted.

73,

Mark
KQ4Q  

 

Bravo. Well said!

Myself, even though both of my repeaters are sitting in the garage at the moment, I joined SERA last Monday in support for their decision. Long past due.

Almost everywhere I have lived over the last 10 years, most of the repeaters have PL. I'm in Atlanta this part of my life, and Atlanta is no exception. The 146.820 repeater is perhaps the widest coverage machine in the area, with several voting receivers spread all over the metro area. Yes, it's toned, but the repeater ID broadcasts that information every time it IDs. My repeaters do the same thing. Even when the ID is CW, (QSO in progress) it sends "PL 100" every cycle (all my machines use 100.0 Hz), but that may not be so effective in this day of zero-code ham radio. The one thing that could be always counted on, and what I have used for years as I travel from Maine to California, is the ARRL repeater guide. With all coordinating bodies as far as I know, as soon as a repeater is documented, it is submitted to the ARRL. The next year, your repeater will show up with all information needed to access it, and a great deal more. The guide even identifies IRLP nodes now. The only problem I have ever had with the system is whan I lived in Colorado, they listed my machine as "Solar powered". No big deal, but an email to my coordinator, and the next issue, it was fixed. I buy a copy EVERY year, and keep it in the car unless I'm flying, then I stick it in my pocket. VERY handy book, and it's sized to fit in your shirt pocket! As for programming your radio, you should pull off the road to do that anyway. If you do much traveling, you HAVE to be somewhat proficient at programming a new frequency into your radio, and setting up a matching tone. Not all wide coverage repeaters are on "standard" splits, and splits are different from one coordinated area to the other. In Colorado, my repeater was on 447.700 out, and of course, 442.700 in. That isn't a legal pair in the SERA bandplan. You really need the guide to get a good feel for what's really out there. The majority of repeaters are CTCSS nowdays, at least in population centers and almost exclusively when using other than the 146 and 224 bands. If the bulk of your travels are between Greeneville, SC and Knoxville, TN and all you use is two meters, perhaps not so much. That's most certainly a carrier squelch corridor.

Another thing that has been mentioned is standard community tones. Yes, I realize that would be telling YOU what tone to use, and that may compromise your liberties, but it works. Entire communities where frequency re-use is not an issue uses a common tone, such as 107.2 for every machine. That way, when you enter East Tennessee for example, you know that at least in the Knoxville area, all repeaters are using 107.2 Hz. (That ain't the case, but it makes a fine example). The tone thing is really not that big of an obsticle.

The only radio I have had that was difficult in setting this up was the original Alinco dual-band mobile that they built back in 1983. It had both encode and decode built in, but you couldn't directly enter the tone frequency like ALL modern rigs, you had to enter a code from 0 to 60 it seems like, which meant carrying a photocopy of the tone matrix around. Now THAT was a pain. The best part, most areas around the country seem to have chosen four or five common tones that are in use almost everywhere, so knowing the codes for the most popular tones covered me almost everywhere I went.

Yeah, I know. I'm long winded. It's the ragchewer in me.

 

The SS64 is dip switch set.  This is the functional equivalent of a crystal controlled transciever with only one "channel".  You have to open the rig and set a dip switch to change tones, so if repeaters are toned, you basically have access to only one repeater.

Hardly "progress..."

Certainly no solution to the problem, and completely impractical for travelers.

 

By the way - at Shelby this weekend, I saw dozens if not hundreds of non-tone 2-meter rigs being sold. I suppose the buyers are looking forward to junking their "new toys".