About ready to submit a frequency, but I can't quite identify it yet

[wyomingmedic]

Howdy,

Okay, after months of searching I THINK I've found the University of Wyoming transit bus repeater specs.

But as I monitor it, things don't add up. Riding the buses, I can hear the driver's radio and will ONLY hear other bus traffic. But listening to their repeater traffic on several outboard radios, I also hear parking officers on the same frequency.

When the buses use the repeater, it outputs a 141.3hz tone, but when the parking officers transmit, they do NOT have that same tone.

I've worked extensively with analog commercial repeaters and quite frankly, this is confusing me. Switching over to the repeater input, I can hear both bus and parking traffic, so they are all using the ram machine for sure.

And as a side note, their licenses expired in 2011. But anyway . . .lol.

 

[wyShack]

Sounds like they are using tones for different 'talkgroups'. quite common (or at least it was). Several 'users' could use the same repeater and by using different tones share a channel. The radios themselves often had a circuit that would not allow transmitting if a carrier was detected (and a 'busy' light on the radios. Not exactly trunking, but one way for sharing frequencies and repeaters.

If you have the input the two groups are likely using different tones -either that or parking is alos monitoring the busses.

Glad to hear others still use search and hunt..

 

[Thunderknight]

Often called a "community repeater".

 

[wyomingmedic]

Sounds like they are using tones for different 'talkgroups'. quite common (or at least it was). Several 'users' could use the same repeater and by using different tones share a channel. The radios themselves often had a circuit that would not allow transmitting if a carrier was detected (and a 'busy' light on the radios. Not exactly trunking, but one way for sharing frequencies and repeaters.

If you have the input the two groups are likely using different tones -either that or parking is alos monitoring the busses.

Glad to hear others still use search and hunt..

Interesting. I'm wondering which repeaters could support this activity. I only ever knew them to pass the input data (radio traffic) to the output and it was an all or nothing type of thing.

As for searching, I use all clues at my disposal. Seeing which antennas and radios are used, digging through FCC licensing sites, frequency counters, etc. I had a rough idea about these buses, but they transmit extremely infrequently and only for a few seconds at a time. Generally much shorter than the gate speed on my counter.

Suffice it to say, it has been difficult. And as you can imagine, the university licenses tons of frequencies ranging from low band stuff up through UHF high. Fun search and I was finally in the correct place at the correct time.

 

[nd5y]

Interesting. I'm wondering which repeaters could support this activity.

Any repeater can do that if the controller can be set up with different tones. It was done all the time back before trunking. Google "community repeater tone panel".
Only one user (one tone) can be active at a time. It's not like a tunked system or TDMA. It only keeps the different groups from having to listen to eachother. The users are supposed to monitor the repeater before talking. Some radios had wire or switch on the mic hanger that disabled PL or DCS decode when you pick up the mic. That's also what the Monitor button is for on most commercial radios.

 

[joen7xxx]

In the "olden days" community repeaters were very common. A radio shop would put up a repeater and sell or lease radios to subscribers. Each subscriber would have their own assigned PL code. The repeater controller had the capability of logging how much air time each subscriber used and billed them accordingly.

 

[tyytor]

do you want to give frequency? licence? as you said they have a lot assigned,
please do tell

 

[wyomingmedic]

I submitted the data for the bus repeater as well as dorm housekeeping repeater. They were added to the UW section under Albany county.

All of the UW repeaters are on top of various school buildings, so their range is really limited to Laramie city limits. The bus repeater is ( I think) on the roof of White Hall.

Their license callsign is WPTR832 which expired in 2011 and was cancelled in 2012.