Two Meter & 70 CM Band Plans

I have been giving some thought to programming my Yaesu FT1XD with as many different 2 meter and 70 cm repeater pairs as possible. At first, it seemed simple, but th en I realized that the band plans differ around the United States. For example, In Minnesota, the 2 meter 145 segment is spaced 20 KHS apart and the 146-147 segment is 15 KHz spacing.

On 70 cm, Minnesota is 442-445 repeater output and 447-450 input. I seem to recall that other states have 447-450 output and 442-445 input. Does anybody which is more common? Also, does anybody have a map or chart which breaks it down by state?

JASII said:

On 70 cm, Minnesota is 442-445 repeater output and 447-450 input. I seem to recall that other states have 447-450 output and 442-445 input. Does anybody which is more common? Also, does anybody have a map or chart which breaks it down by state?

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I think nationwide on 70 cm high-in/low-out (+ 5 MHz offset) and 25 kHz channel spacing is the most common. Some places have both high-in/low-out (+) and low-in/high out (-) in the same area. Channel spacing can also vary. Some places are putting digital repeaters on 12.5 kHz interstitial channels.

Repeater channels can also vary on 2 m. Some states that use 15 kHz spacing stagger the offset of adjacent channels. (146.94 out/146.34 in, 146.355 out/146.955 in). In addition to that some states that have 20 kHz spacing on 2 m use odd channels (146.61, 146.63) and some use even channels (146.62, 146.64).

The ARRL Repeater Directory used to have a map of which states had 15 and 20 kHz spacing on 2 m but I haven't seen one in over 15 years and don't know if they still have it. I have never seen a national map of 70 cm.

In the mid-Atlantic 440 pairs go both ways. Look at ARCC, MetroCor, and T-MARC. You will have to account for 1 MHz splits on 2 meters. I won't even attempt to explain California. The best suggestion I can make is search with the phrase "<state> frequency coordinator" to find each state's coordinating organization. Some states have several organizations.

The links to the National Frequency Coordinators Council (NFCC) website on NFCC and Frequency Coordinators, below the paragraph, are broken.

The URL https://www.nfcc.us fails to find a server. (The link in the RR wiki is also broken; sorry, I never figured out how to edit wiki pages.) The LinkedIn profile shows a https://www.thenfcc.org URL that also fails.

The webpage NATIONAL FREQUENCY COORDINATORS COUNCIL suggests everyone took their marbles and went home.

You might watch the ARRL pages above to see if those pages are updated. If I get an answer from the ARRL, i'll post it.

If the NFCC still exists, their website should have links to all the coordinators' websites. Those should have their respective bandplans.9

"Band Plans" seem to vary greatly across the US. In my experience, the easiest thing to do is find out what repeaters serve the areas you will be traveling through, and program those into your radio. Besides the local repeaters where I live, I've programed in some for places that I frequently travel to. With my Anytone 868 I can put them in separate zones. For example, since I often travel through Seattle, I have a "WA DMR" zone and a "WA Analog" zone, with some of the more useful local repeaters in each.

To find repeaters in any area, the best source I've found is at https://www.repeaterbook.com. You can search their database by state, type of service, etc.
There is also an iPhone app for this.

AK_SAR said:

"Band Plans" seem to vary greatly across the US. In my experience, the easiest thing to do is find out what repeaters serve the areas you will be traveling through, and program those into your radio. Besides the local repeaters where I live, I've programed in some for places that I frequently travel to. With my Anytone 868 I can put them in separate zones. For example, since I often travel through Seattle, I have a "WA DMR" zone and a "WA Analog" zone, with some of the more useful local repeaters in each.

To find repeaters in any area, the best source I've found is at https://www.repeaterbook.com. You can search their database by state, type of service, etc.
There is also an iPhone app for this.

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Agreed.

Since I retired, I travel extensively visiting friends and relatives, I program my FT-8900 using RT Systems and use the program to store my frequent trips. For me, part of the fun of traveling is the planning and when I venture into "new" territory, that planning includes looking for the repeaters along the way.

Having said that, I've found that many of the repeaters shown as "active" in Repeaterbook are, in fact, inactive, at least I get no response from the repeater when I try to "check in,"

KK4JUG said:

Having said that, I've found that many of the repeaters shown as "active" in Repeaterbook are, in fact, inactive, at least I get no response from the repeater when I try to "check in,"

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Yes, that is true. However, what I've noticed is that how active repeaters are seems to depend somewhat on the time of day. Here locally, one of our best repeaters with wide coverage is pretty quiet most of the day. But then starting about 15:30 or so it starts to pick up. Folks with mobile rigs start checking in while driving home from work.

Another thing I sometimes do while traveling is google local radio clubs. On their websites they often will list scheduled nets. I sometimes find it interesting to listen to, and occasionally check in to local 2M nets.

AK_SAR said:

Yes, that is true. However, what I've noticed is that how active repeaters are seems to depend somewhat on the time of day. Here locally, one of our best repeaters with wide coverage is pretty quiet most of the day. But then starting about 15:30 or so it starts to pick up. Folks with mobile rigs start checking in while driving home from work.

Another thing I sometimes do while traveling is google local radio clubs. On their websites they often will list scheduled nets. I sometimes find it interesting to listen to, and occasionally check in to local 2M nets.

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I meant I can't get a response from the repeater. I understand not getting a warm body to respond for various reasons but, in fact, the repeater frequently doesn't respond.

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That's a neat project, JAS, but ...
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Oh my!!, you have set yourself a daunting task-- need I say a rather Quixotic journey?
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For one thing, why do you want all that program'd into your radio ? Anticipating a long cross-country journey ?
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I'm not trying to be a SmartA** here, but my guess is if the majority of the list'ings you'll find are not only in error, then 90 percent of the time there will be no one on that machine, even if the the bugger "ker-chunk's" you back.
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If programming all the various Frequencies isn't enuff, then consider the PL, DCS's... etc. access codes.
A 146.76 repeater in Poison Spider, Wyoming** with a PL of 107 may not be the same for the '76 machine on Fools Pass, Montana***
Why go to all that (pre) truble, when if you arrive in the vicinity of Poison Spider you just don't pull out your list, dial it in, and ...... be disappoint'd when no one come back to you after a sucessful "ker-chunk." her.......
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A friend and I just did a cross country trip; and on it, one of the minor asides was to see what what 2 metre's and 440 held. We travelled from Washington DC to Santa Fe NM- and hardly ever ventured off 146.52 and 446.0.
Yes, there were probably a lot of neat QSO's we miss'd- but probably a tonne more of fustrations at coming up blank for all the efforts of trying to keep track of repeaters in active memory... life is too short, for some of us, to get that bogg'd down. We got out and walked about and interact'd with the countryside- traveling is about much more than ham radio...
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Coyote's advice ?? (for what it worth... ) -- It's to carry a repeater guidebook-- and hope its up-to-date (good luck there)-- then dial in the repeaters in the areas you will be visiting.... and hope there is someone there-on to talk to.
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Honestly, the only frequency I listen to anymore in my vehicles is '52'- though I do switch now and then to the repeaters-- but only every now and then.
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To me, a full memory in my radios is upsetting-- knowing that 99.99% of them are useless- but that's me.
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Ah !. Hey, --- all this individualism makes for an interesting hobby, No ?....
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Lauri
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** a real place ! neat one too, -- on the Overland trail......
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*** I made this one up, but anyone who has explored the Bitter Root's probably can come up with any number of good places to fit this ....
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I have a Yaesu FT-8900 and I keep one side on "52" and use the other side for repeaters while I'm on the road.

I'm not sure I understand the point of the exercise. If you program every pair used in every part of the country, it would probably take you longer to find the channel you want in memory than it would to spin the vfo and select the offset.

BTW, in Southern California, the 440-450 band is 20khz spacing, low in, high out.

KK4JUG said:

I meant I can't get a response from the repeater. I understand not getting a warm body to respond for various reasons but, in fact, the repeater frequently doesn't respond.

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Unfortunately with the system fusion explosion alot of clubs and repeater owners including my local club have done away with courtesy tones and dropped the squelch hang time to near nothing. I've noticed sometimes that on one radio i can hear the repeater dropping but not on the radio I'm transmitting on.

Is this for your immediate region, such as a state in each direction, or are you looking to program every possible pair nationwide?

I don't think any Ham radio has enough memory space to program every possible repeater pair for 2m and 70cm regionally, let alone nationwide. If you limited it to specific wide coverage area repeaters in your region, your radio may have enough memory, but not every possible pair. And AFAIK, the typical memory channel scanning speeds of most Ham radios isn't the greatest. At least I don't think they can compare to your typical scanner.

Can you clarify exactly what you want to do, and maybe explain your reasoning behind wanting to do so?

John
Peoria, AZ

JASII,

I have to agree with the others and Lauri particularly brought up perhaps the biggest issue and that is of Private Line (PL) tones for the analog repeaters, as an example. You might have to program the repeater pair 146.01 MHz (Tx) / 146.61 MHz (Rx) twenty-seven times to pick up all of the PL tones used across the United States. One repeater might use a PL of 67.0 Hz, another 79.7 Hz, another 97.4 Hz, yet another 107.2 Hz, ... , and finally 254.1 Hz. Of course, without the correct PL programmed in along with the frequency pair, you would not be able to bring up the repeater.

Yes, it sounds like this project will be a lifelong endeavor... :lol:

73, Dave K4EET

KB7MIB said:

I don't think any Ham radio has enough memory space to program every possible repeater pair for 2m and 70cm regionally, let alone nationwide.

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2m 145 MHz segment: If every repeater used 20 kHz channel spacing and low-in, high-out, there are 20 pairs between 145.110 and 145.490 MHz.

2m 146-147 MHz segment: If every repeater used 15 kHz channel spacing and low-in, high-out in the 146 MHz segment and high-in, low-out in the 147 MHz segment, there are 53 pairs between 146.610 and 147.390 MHz.

70cm: If every repeater used 25 kHz channel spacing and high-in, low-out, there are 120 pairs between 442.000 and 444.975 MHz.

So, that's a total of 193 pairs. Many modern amateur radio handheld and mobiles have 200, 500, or 1000 memory channels.

But, as others have pointed out, there are regional differences to the channel plan that I described that you'd have to account for. And, that's where the exercise becomes much more daunting.

Repeater info

One big major problem is that the required sub audible tone that many of us call the "PL tone" needed to open up a repeater is either not published in many databases or has the wrong tone given.

An example of this is the many repeaters listed on my normal trip from southern Louisiana up to New Hampshire. Over the many years, I have refined my repeater listing to obtain and record the needed (PL) tone for the repeaters. If I find I can't open up a repeater, I get on one in the area that I can hit and start asking questions. Most of the time the contact I have made can provide the answer to my question about the repeater in question. I write down the info and update the programming in my radio.

This is common around the country and the owners of these repeaters don't give a rat about updating the info in the different data bases. So it seems to fall on us users that transit through and find the errors.

The radios I use are commercial radios and I have to use a computer to change any information that is not correct. I also have my radios set up in zones, so each zone covers a different location or segment of my trips. Not having enough channels in the radios, I have different programming code plugs as they are called for the direction or region I might be traveling through.

The big thing is to save the updated files on the computer by name and date so I can reload the current files as needed. It only takes a couple of minutes to change from one region trip to a different one.

Jim

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Lauri-Coyote said:

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..Oh my!!, you have set yourself a daunting task-- need I say a rather Quixotic journey?

...If programming all the various Frequencies isn't enuff, then consider the PL, DCS's... etc. access codes....

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What she say!

You will save yourself a world of hassle if you just program in the the simplex frequencies plus the repeater pairs you are likely to use. Just because a radio has 1000 memory slots doesn't mean that they all need to be filled.

Update your programming as your needs and travel area change.

As I recall, the repeaterbook app provides a listing of repeaters for a desired radius around your existing GPS lat/long. I've actually found most of the California listings for repeaterbook to be pretty accurate. Those that are not can be updated by anyone.

As an aside, after coming home from a road trip years ago and having to figure out PL encode tones for so many repeaters, I seriously considered building my own encoder which encodes all tones at the same time. Obviously it wouldn't work in a metro area, but for the rest of the world it would do the trick.

If you use the RT Systems software, you make things quite a bit easier. It will pull in the needed data from different sources, including the RepeaterBook and RR.

w2xq said:

In the mid-Atlantic 440 pairs go both ways. Look at ARCC, MetroCor, and T-MARC. You will have to account for 1 MHz splits on 2 meters. I won't even attempt to explain California. The best suggestion I can make is search with the phrase "<state> frequency coordinator" to find each state's coordinating organization. Some states have several organizations.

The links to the National Frequency Coordinators Council (NFCC) website on NFCC and Frequency Coordinators, below the paragraph, are broken.

The URL https://www.nfcc.us fails to find a server. (The link in the RR wiki is also broken; sorry, I never figured out how to edit wiki pages.) The LinkedIn profile shows a https://www.thenfcc.org URL that also fails.

The webpage NATIONAL FREQUENCY COORDINATORS COUNCIL suggests everyone took their marbles and went home.

You might watch the ARRL pages above to see if those pages are updated. If I get an answer from the ARRL, i'll post it.

If the NFCC still exists, their website should have links to all the coordinators' websites. Those should have their respective bandplans.9

Click to expand...

The ARRL doesn't know where the NFCC hides. As to my suggestion of updating the arrl.org pages, well, 2 weeks later those links still haven't been removed. Why am I not surprised? Pfft.

As far as I know, the NFCC no longer exists. The local/state/regional coordinators operate independently. Some of them cooperate with the coordinators in their surrounding areas. In Indiana, we have a good working relationship with Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, and Wisconsin.