squirrel911
Member
Ok, first I am not sure where this belongs so please move if it is in the wrong forum.
So, I used to belong to a Volunteer Fire Department in Louisiana. That fire department had there own repeater along with the parish wide repeater. They had a setup that my current VFD would like to use. I tried to explain how the repeater system worked but I was told by 2 different radio shops they dont know how it was done so I come to all you experts and see if someone can help me out. I will try to explain it the best I can. so here i go.
Ok so there was a parish wide fire frequency that i will call Repeater 1. The FD i was on had our own frequency with repeater setup at our main station and I will call the Repeater 2. We all had kenwood portable radios. Channel 1 was set to Repeater 2 and channel 2 was set to Repeater 1. Now when someone called 911 the dispatchers would set off our fire tones on Repeater 1. When they did Repeater 2 would somehow hear this and open up a bridge between Repeater 2 and Repeater 1. I could hear the traffic on channel 1 of my radio. Someone would check in route in Repeater 2 and our dispatcher would hear it on Repeater 1. 90 secs after the tones went off the bridge between Repeater 2 and Repeater 1 would close and anything we said over Repeater 2 would just be heard on the repeater. Now our chief, asst chief, and 2 of our engines had mobiles with DTMF mics in there and if we wanted we could input a DTMF code on Repeater 2 and reopen that bridge between the two Repeaters. We would have to re-input the DTMF cose to close the bridge again. Now when we had natural disasters liek hurricanes and if Repeater 1 went down we could open the bridge up and then when the dispatchers had to dispatch any FD in the parish it would use Repeater 2.
Ok I hope I explained that correctly. So I was wondering a few things about this setup.
1) Has anyone ever used a system like this?
2) Is there a repeater system already built by Motorola, Kenwood, or any other company? and If so whats the price?
3) If not sold how hard would it be to build something like this?
Now I know my FD will have to get our own Frequency and we are already in the process of doing this. Also we are UHF here if that matters any.
Thanks ahead of time for the help.
So, I used to belong to a Volunteer Fire Department in Louisiana. That fire department had there own repeater along with the parish wide repeater. They had a setup that my current VFD would like to use. I tried to explain how the repeater system worked but I was told by 2 different radio shops they dont know how it was done so I come to all you experts and see if someone can help me out. I will try to explain it the best I can. so here i go.
Ok so there was a parish wide fire frequency that i will call Repeater 1. The FD i was on had our own frequency with repeater setup at our main station and I will call the Repeater 2. We all had kenwood portable radios. Channel 1 was set to Repeater 2 and channel 2 was set to Repeater 1. Now when someone called 911 the dispatchers would set off our fire tones on Repeater 1. When they did Repeater 2 would somehow hear this and open up a bridge between Repeater 2 and Repeater 1. I could hear the traffic on channel 1 of my radio. Someone would check in route in Repeater 2 and our dispatcher would hear it on Repeater 1. 90 secs after the tones went off the bridge between Repeater 2 and Repeater 1 would close and anything we said over Repeater 2 would just be heard on the repeater. Now our chief, asst chief, and 2 of our engines had mobiles with DTMF mics in there and if we wanted we could input a DTMF code on Repeater 2 and reopen that bridge between the two Repeaters. We would have to re-input the DTMF cose to close the bridge again. Now when we had natural disasters liek hurricanes and if Repeater 1 went down we could open the bridge up and then when the dispatchers had to dispatch any FD in the parish it would use Repeater 2.
Ok I hope I explained that correctly. So I was wondering a few things about this setup.
1) Has anyone ever used a system like this?
2) Is there a repeater system already built by Motorola, Kenwood, or any other company? and If so whats the price?
3) If not sold how hard would it be to build something like this?
Now I know my FD will have to get our own Frequency and we are already in the process of doing this. Also we are UHF here if that matters any.
Thanks ahead of time for the help.