The Demise Of The Florida Repeater Council (FRC)

[CanesFan95]

There's a new group called "FASMA" that was at the Orlando Hamcation with a small table setup advertising their website. The Florida Repeater Council website no longer exists and the outdated often inaccurate .pdf repeater listings are gone. Now it re-directs to FASMA:

Frequently Asked Questions – FASMA

The allegation is that for a long time, the FRC was notorious for being slow or non-existent to respond to requests for repeater frequency pairs. There's even accusations of FRC members favoring friends or even taking bribes to get a repeater coordinated. QRZ has a long thread abuot it:

https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?threads/florida-repeater-council-members-reject-corruption.573313/

There's another website with a long history of all kinds of other horse manure: Florida Repeater Council Reform Now! – Make the FRC work for all amateurs .

So basically, the FRC was overthrown and now there's apparently just a big uncoordinated mess. This is a shame cos now there doesn't seem to be any statewide repeater listings like we used to have. But then again, the old listings were often inaccurate.

 

[edweirdFL]

There was an interview with Bryan from FASMA that was recorded by Ham Radio Now and is posted on their YouTube channel that provides an update and answers some questions. It's worth watching but the short answer is that once the database is updated, it will be published and available.

Bryan says in the interview that FASMA has been doing coordination in the months since and that folks who need coordination should contact them via the website which will generate a help desk like ticket to make sure that requests are responded to and don't fall through the cracks.

I also look forward to an updated directory at some point.

 

[batdude]

as someone who dealt with the FRC in the past.... the organization was broken.... corrupt... and run by a bunch of self-serving morons.... the change was long overdue.

 

[WX4JCW]

nice to see some changes,corrupt groups and good ole boy cliques are contributing to the demise of the hobby

 

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

From the little I read, in about two hours, it seems the FRC did not stand up to outside scrutiny and they folded their tent. Maybe they were fed up, maybe there was fire under the smoke.

This new coordinator is going to have to employ someone savvy in frequency coordination, the use of specific software tools and familiar with TSB-88D. I would do it for about $125K a year, there will be a long while reconciling the existing mess to see what stations have what footprint. Hope they used "science" when they created the existing database and kept detailed records. Kind of hard now to go back and ask an incumbent station "What ERP and antenna pattern are you running". The answer will probably be 1,000 W ERP, Omnidirectional!

I am seeing a trend in Part 90 as well. I worked on a frequency plan for a I/B client in south Florida and the coordinator was reluctant to make recommendations without the client first paying a local shop $$$$ to monitor for clean channels. Seems there is so much uncoordinated and illegal stuff out there. My position is this, just coordinate us among the legal stations and if someone illegal pops up, then tough luck for them. It didn't help that the client relied on three different vendors who would just program in odd channels in their radios. Going back to license these, they belonged to those dealers as part of their rental fleet licenses. Don't get me going on all those .xx625 splinters licensed for NXDN leaving the other half of the channel unusable for any 12.5 KHz BW systems.

 

[Star2BarryN]

My position is this, just coordinate us among the legal stations and if someone illegal pops up, then tough luck for them.

Well, except that in the amateur band it is legal to run an un-coordinated repeater. Discouraged, but legal. You do have to take steps to reduce eliminate interference if you interfere with a coordinated repeater.