Owning a repeater

[zz0468]

I may not be properly communicating my point. The key is interference. Without it there is no issue, regardless of coordination.

I quite understand that. And yes, that is true.

But it's a chicken and the egg thing. Interference happens even between coordinated repeaters. But in that case, the coordinator generally has enough cooperation between parties that the FCC doesn't get dragged in.
In practice, however, many people who refuse to bother with going through the process are difficult and obstinate to start with. So, they go into an interference issue with a built in disadvantage. Many of them refuse to go through the process with the intent on causing problems.

 

[wuzafuzz]

Don't most coordination bodies designate some pairs for non-coordinated use? In Colorado our coordinators created "Shared - Non Protected" pairs (SNP's). Seems like a good way to go. If I were a coordinator in an area with no SNP's and a pile of paper repeaters, I would free up some pairs for uncoordinated use.
Coordination Policy Revision 4

Having said that, you take your chances if you go uncoordinated. I had settled on one of the local SNP's in case my coordination didn't work out. The same weekend my coordination was approved, a big gun repeater went live on the SNP I had as my plan B.

I differ with the perception that someone willing to go uncoordinated is likely difficult and obstinate to start with. It's merely a personal choice, one that becomes perfectly viable if dealing with ineffective coordinators. But as I mentioned earlier, you take your chances.

 

[AK9R]

Not all coordinators have SNPs and the ones that do don't always have SNPs on all bands.

 

[centuryvrproductions]

I am a Tech class Ham and i wanted to put up a repeater... i have a 45watt repeater rig. VHF. I wanted to use it mostly for personal use, I am located in an ok spot and I have a 40ft antenna... How can i leagally use it or do i have to register it at all?

 

[zz0468]

I am a Tech class Ham and i wanted to put up a repeater... i have a 45watt repeater rig. VHF. I wanted to use it mostly for personal use, I am located in an ok spot and I have a 40ft antenna... How can i leagally use it or do i have to register it at all?

You have a technician license, so legally, you can put it on the air. Whether that's the RIGHT thing to do depends on a lot of factors. I would suggest you contact your local frequency coordinator to find out how to go about getting a coordinated frequency assigned to it.

To put it bluntly, if you're asking those questions here, you're clearly in over your head. Go with the fact that you have a lot to learn about repeaters and their operation, and learn everything you can BEFORE you attempt to put it on the air. The one thing that amateur radio does NOT need is another poorly installed uncoordinated repeater.

The definitive resource is repeater-builder.com. Start there, and join the Repeater Builder yahoo group. That will start you on the right track.

 

[Daniel_Boone]

I will make a comment in 10,000 words or less and then I will let it go at that.

My comments usually revolve around how stupid people really are.
IN my area of the country, there are a lot of unused repeater pairs - where the frequencies were allotted and were never used and the repeater owners - that has working repeaters bought up the unused frequencies and they hold them - so no one else can get them and compete with their repeaters.

Repeaters 2 meters / 440 etc are a thing of the past.
In my area of the country, they are almost unused to the point of where the FCC is threatening to take away the 440 mhz portion of the bands due to all the inactivity.

Repeaters are usually used by mobile rigs - where one person is traveling and is looking for someone to talk to, or is traveling to and from work and is looking for someone to talk to or is used by new hams - who do not possess the privileges necessary to talk on the other bands.
Once a person gets a general class license - for the most part - as soon as they get a HF rig and a good antenna system - they abandon the 2 meters crap and migrate up into the HF.

Now my second question has to do with all the people out there that studies hard to take the Technician and General license - who are intelligent people, but are too stupid to realize that the answers that you are looking for is already mentioned in the exams for both the Technician and the General and the Amateur Extra class license.

If people were not so stupid and not in such a rush to get their license, they would look up the answers to the questions - since that is the reason why the questions are on the test in the first place.
To TEACH people about amateur radio.

A smart person would already know that no one owns a particular frequency.

What this means is that you do not have to have permission from anyone to build a actual repeater and you do not have to ask permission from a repeater council to get a pair of coordinated frequencies.
The repeater council is made up of repeater owners - who by the buddy system - trys to keep out all the undesirables. By that I mean the new hams who wants to cause trouble for the other repeater owners by putting up a bigger repeater then what is already there. By trying to limit the height of the transmitter and the ERP - Effective Radiated Power and by limiting the range of the new repeater to keep it from bleeding over into their repeater system which is already established.

So by this means - anyone that owns a piece of land, who has access to a tower, who owns a certain amount of equipment and has a certain amount of expertise and is willing to do a lot of work - can quite possibly put up a repeater.

There is rules in place - such as the tower cannot go beyond 200 feet with out a permit from the FCC and the FAA. The FCC would ask you to prove why a taller tower would benefit the general ham community and be of some public benefit in order to allow it to be built. The FAA would require it to be beyond the flight path of normal traffic and limit you to being more then 5 miles away from a public use airport.

Other then that - the other part would be a controller which would be connected to a permanent phone line that is connected to a unpublished telephone number - which can be used to sensate all transmissions if the transmitter gets stuck and transmits for more then 3 minutes.

I can recall per verbatim dozens of times where local repeaters here has ran for days with no one at the wheel. Where all it transmitted was a dead carrier and no call sign identification.
When I bounced the repeater owners about it - their reply was that it was allowed to do it because it is MY REPEATER!
I will go one step further and say that towers are usually built in places which are the most conducive to broadcasting - such as on the top of a mountain and not necessarily in dad's back pasture on next to your house - because that is where it is most convenient to build.

Keeping all this in mind, it costs in the neighborhood of about $12,000 to put up a new 200 ft tower and another $5,000 - $10,000 for the transmitter and the transmitter building.

Telephone poles and antenna's on the top are for GMRS - Land Mobile Radio Service, where they don't care how many repeaters they have to put up -- because the customers pays the bill for the repeaters and the electricity.

My one friend told me that his LMRS customers pays a flat rate of about $50.00 a month to be on his repeaters. At that rate - with 10 customers and 10 repeaters on telephone poles and a $25.00 a month electric bill and a $600 - every 10 years fee for the license - he barely breaks even.....

The bottom line is that you have to use a Fris Transmission calculator to determine how much ERP you will have.
You have to use a Longely Rice Calculator to determine how far it will transmit once you build it.
You have to use Google Earth to determine where the transmitter is going to be built and you have to have a exact coordinates for the area and a elevation AMSL to apply for the license from the FCC.

The FCC will ask a fee - to give you a number - which is used for all inquires between you and them.
I think the fee was like $85.00

The repeater council - if they want to be real pricks - can charge you at least $650 to figure out all this stuff for you and to give you a pair for frequencies. But then again - they will put you on hold at least 2 years and even when you get your pairs - you might be limited to 50' of HAAT and 50 watts to keep you from interfering with other coordinated pairs in the area.....

The bottom line is - unless you have a tenant for the top of your tower - that is willing to pay all the taxes and the cost of the land and the electric bill and the insurance and the inspections - since your tower will be registered and will need to be inspected every 5 - 10 years. There is no way that most people could afford to build a tower - just so other people can use it for free.

The next step above that is - no club is allowed to charge a FEE - for a person to be allowed to use the repeater... So this has to be funded by some type of general fund or out of your own pocket.

VHF is very susceptible to noise.
Be it electrical noise - fans, switches, power lines, fence chargers, motor brush noise etc.
Atmospheric noise - lightning
Interference from other signals in the same area - including 3rd order harmonic's.

UHF is limited to LOS communications.
UHF is like shining a flashlight - it does not go up one hill and down the next.
It does not shine into the side of one hill and come out the other side - like a Buggs Bunny cartoon.
It does not bend around the earth.
Eventually the signal travels out of the atmosphere - if it does not have anything to bounce off - and is lost in space - like the old television program.

It does have its benefits
It is quieter, it is more stable when the weather is unstable.
It's downfall is that electric costs are more for UHF then for VHF because VHF will travel further with less effort then UHF.
It is also disturbed by other stations - even hundreds of miles away when a good tropo weather pattern comes along and some type of inversion layer is in the atmosphere or a fog bank at night which holds the signals closer to the ground.

So it is all a big gamble - that you could build the worlds greatest repeater - only to find out that no one can hear it or hit it or that it keeps getting taken off the air by a stronger coordinated repeater somewhere else.

So the question is - why would you want to build your own repeater - when you can use someone elses for free?

The only reason I can see is because maybe the repeater owners in your area are bung holes and they don't get along with you. Or - there isn't what you are looking for on your local repeaters and you want to control what goes on - on your repeater.

The bottom line is - unless you can afford to pay someone to monitor what goes on - on your repeater, while you are at work, asleep in your bed, away on vacation, sick in the hospital etc - there is no way you can afford to maintain a repeater of any size.

All it takes is one jerk off drunk - who gets on the repeater and starts cussing and swearing - to get you into a lot of trouble. You could get your station license and your operators license revoked if something really bad happened.

Then on top of all this - you have to have a fence around your repeater to keep others away from the tower and you have to have some type of security system to keep intruders out of your repeater building.

I don't think that you could afford it - or else you wouldn't be on here asking how to do it.
Anybody that could afford to do all this could surely afford a lawyer that is well versed in communications law that could do all of this for you - for a fee..

Well unless you throw another nickle in the juke box - I am done on this one, my two cents has run out.

Have a good day

73's

 

[grem467]

WOW! What the hell?!?!

 

[zz0468]

Repeaters 2 meters / 440 etc are a thing of the past.

Not if the lengthy waiting lists for frequency coordination are any indicator.

In my area of the country, they are almost unused to the point of where the FCC is threatening to take away the 440 mhz portion of the bands due to all the inactivity.

Any reallocation of amateur bands has nothing to do with the activity level. Money is the motivation, and the perception that certain pieces of spectrum will bring more value than whatever the previous use was.

Once a person gets a general class license - for the most part - as soon as they get a HF rig and a good antenna system - they abandon the 2 meters crap and migrate up into the HF.

So, where does that leave all the extra class hams that operate exclusively on repeaters? I personally know quite a few.

A smart person would already know that no one owns a particular frequency.

What this means is that you do not have to have permission from anyone to build a actual repeater and you do not have to ask permission from a repeater council to get a pair of coordinated frequencies

By definition, if you want a coordinated frequency, you must go through a coordinator.

The repeater council is made up of repeater owners - who by the buddy system - trys to keep out all the undesirables...

The sole purpose of coordination is to try to minimize or prevent interference before it starts. It stands to reason that a repeater coordinating council would have a membership of repeater owners, as opposed to, say, repeater users. The owners are the ones who have a more vested interest in seeing that the process is done correctly. There are exceptions to that, but in general those exceptions do not work well.

When I bounced the repeater owners about it - their reply was that it was allowed to do it because it is MY REPEATER!

There may be parameters that their system is operating under that you're not aware of.

The bottom line is that you have to use a Fris Transmission calculator to determine how much ERP you will have.
You have to use a Longely Rice Calculator to determine how far it will transmit once you build it.
You have to use Google Earth to determine where the transmitter is going to be built and you have to have a exact coordinates for the area and a elevation AMSL to apply for the license from the FCC.

There are a lot more tools than that at the disposal of people wanting to put up a repeater. And since this topic relates to amateur repeaters, the comments about GMRS and the FCC don't really apply.

The repeater council - if they want to be real pricks - can charge you at least $650 to figure out all this stuff for you and to give you a pair for frequencies. But then again - they will put you on hold at least 2 years and even when you get your pairs - you might be limited to 50' of HAAT and 50 watts to keep you from interfering with other coordinated pairs in the area.....

For amateur repeaters!? I don't believe it.

As for technical limitations on repeater coordination, this is typical, and is necessary to insure that the technical basis for which a particular coordination is issued is maintained by the repeater owner.

The next step above that is - no club is allowed to charge a FEE - for a person to be allowed to use the repeater... So this has to be funded by some type of general fund or out of your own pocket.

This is untrue. Amateur repeater owners are allowed to require membership, and membership is allowed to be contingent on dues being paid.

VHF is very susceptible to noise.
Be it electrical noise - fans, switches, power lines, fence chargers, motor brush noise etc.
Atmospheric noise - lightning
Interference from other signals in the same area - including 3rd order harmonic's.

A gross over simplification...

UHF is limited to LOS communications.
UHF is like shining a flashlight - it does not go up one hill and down the next.
It does not shine into the side of one hill and come out the other side - like a Buggs Bunny cartoon.
It does not bend around the earth.
Eventually the signal travels out of the atmosphere - if it does not have anything to bounce off - and is lost in space - like the old television program.

Another gross over simplification...

It's downfall is that electric costs are more for UHF then for VHF because VHF will travel further with less effort then UHF.

WHAT!!?? LOL! I have no idea what you're talking about here, but it IS funny. :lol:

So the question is - why would you want to build your own repeater - when you can use someone elses for free?

A valid question, but to clarify, you can use someone else's OPEN repeater for free.

The bottom line is - unless you can afford to pay someone to monitor what goes on - on your repeater, while you are at work, asleep in your bed, away on vacation, sick in the hospital etc - there is no way you can afford to maintain a repeater of any size.

There are thousands of repeaters who's owners can afford to maintain their repeaters. Where on earth do you come up with this stuff?

Then on top of all this - you have to have a fence around your repeater to keep others away from the tower and you have to have some type of security system to keep intruders out of your repeater building.

Building a repeater, and building a repeater site are two completely different tasks. Please don't confuse the two.

Well unless you throw another nickle in the juke box - I am done on this one, my two cents has run out.

I guess I threw another nickle in. There was a lot of misinformation in your post.

 

[rfguygg]

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There are many inaccuracies in that post! I'm an extra and I use repeaters daily. I also own one. I have little interest in HF. Does that mean I'm stupid? I put mine on the air to provide a useful service (IRLP) to the area.

Yes commercial stations and towers are a pain. But not so much for HAM. I will agree you can spend a fortune maintaining a repeater but I also know guys with $1000s invested in HF gear.

 

[W2NJS]

post deleted by author

 

[JPSan]

Daniel_Boone great HUMOR piece!

Got to commend you there Daniel_Boone you can really spin some nonsense.:lol: As a repeater owner (UHF amateur and a commercial community repeater system) you MAYBE have 3% ( and that is a STRETCH!) of your facts correct! Glad others have "dissected" your response, so there is very little to add to discredit you any further. Usually, amateur systems are coordinated as to prevent issues and conflicts. But, you did teach me that UHF equipment USES more electricity, WOW, I did NOT know that! Should have charged more fees. Oh, well. Thanks for a great laugh. 6 to and even over and out.