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Voter and Repeaters

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linda4k

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Can someone explain the function of a Voter and the function of a Repeater? Thanks!!
 

stmills

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A voter allows for multiple receive sites for 1 repeater for better coverage. The voter takes the strongest signal and feeds that as the repeater input.
 

K5MPH

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stmills said:
A voter allows for multiple receive sites for 1 repeater for better coverage. The voter takes the strongest signal and feeds that as the repeater input.

Very well put that is how it really works ......
 

teufler

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The Club I am in has 2 repeaters and 3 voter sites per repeater. The voter determines which site has the best receive then that signal goes to the repeater which then broadcasts the signal over the repeater output. Think of the voter sites as crossband receivers who listen to the repeater input frequency, then they send a uhf signal to the host repeater. This assumes you have a vhf repeater. The voter determines which signal is the best. Course the repeater listens on one frequency and broadcasts on another frequecy. The repeaters has cavaties which isolate the transmitter from the receiver so you doin't get feedback. A repeater can be split site, through distance, the transmitter and reciver are separated. This can either be vertically or horizontaly.
 

12dbsinad

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I will add that some voter systems have transmitters at each receiver as well. This is called "vote re-transmit", so lets say one has 4 voter sites around town, a user calls into dispatch and voter site number 2 hears the radio the best. When dispatch answers, the audio can be set to be routed to the transmitter at site 2 and thus giving the best coverage to the user. A voting system uses a device called a "comparator" that listens to all the sites at the same time and quickly selects which one has the strongest signal. You also have to have a audio path connecting all the sites, like a radio link, telco line, microwave, etc. Hope this helps.
 
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ff-medic

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A voter allows for multiple receive sites for 1 repeater for better coverage. The voter takes the strongest signal and feeds that as the repeater input.

Exactly !

My location ditched a "Voting" system some years ago


( For the uninformed ) On the voting system, the person talking "hits" the closest tower, and that tower rebroadcasts that signal to the rest of the towers in that radio system.

Where I live, they done away with the voting system some years ago, and if Law Enforcement / Fire or EMS is at the other end of the county.....I cannot hear them.

And I think it is stupid to have ( tie up ) nine channels in a portable or mobile so you can talk to three agencys. 3 channels each ; for the towers in the north - central and south end of the county. At one time, when we had the voting system, you could talk from one end of the county to the next on a handheld, or portable.

Example. I am at the north end of the county acting in a First Responder capacity and I want to give the responding ambulance ; responding from the center of the county, a patient assessment. I have to let dispatch know and then they have to relay the informaiton.

Alot of calls that "go out" over the radio, once the agency gets on scene - Fire / EMS / Police , it is hard ot hear adn the conversations are alot of static.....because they are talking off of a single tower......miles ans miles away.....Because each individual tower has their own transmit code ( transmit P.L. - Private Line ). And I am here to tell you......It is terrible, really terrible.

YES, I miss the voting system. NO, the "radio traffic" does not get rebroadcasted from one tower to the next.

We need a UHF radio system, with dual band mobile radios in the Fire Trucks, Ambualances and Police Crusiers.

FF - Medic !!!
 

WB4CS

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Can someone explain the function of a Voter and the function of a Repeater? Thanks!!

Welcome to RR forums!

Just in case you were asking what a repeater does, and no one has covered it yet. A repeater "repeats" transmissions.

If you use two radios that talk directly to each other (simplex), their range is very limited. A repeater is a radio that's usually placed on top of a very tall tower, mountain, or building which gives it much greater coverage area than a radio/antenna closer to the ground. The repeater usually puts out a little more transmit power than a mobile or handheld radio does, which also increases the range.

The repeater "listens" on one frequency (input frequency) and retransmits the signal on another frequency (output frequency). This is called duplex (instead of simplex.) The radios in the field (mobile or handheld) receive the repeater on the output frequency and transmit to the repeater on the input frequency.

This increases the overall range of all radios that are in range of the repeater. Instead of only getting a few miles range with simplex, you can get 20+ miles range using a repeater.

To tie that in to the voter question, as others have already said, a repeater can have multiple receiver sites which increase the area that a repeater can "hear." The voter compares the signal received all the remote receiver sites and "votes" on which signal is the best and "tells" the repeater to retransmit that signal over the repeater output.

Was that clear as mud? :) That in the simplest terms is a repeater and voter.
 

quarterwave

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I'll go one more step...

My local Sheriff's system is a voted, simulcast system.

There are 5 sites...one is the "hub" where the voter is.

All 5 sites have a repeater, which is "split", in that the receiver sends it's signal back to the voter at the hub via a leased pair phone line, the voter decides which receiver has the best signal to noise ratio and "votes" it, then sends the audio, and control signals via an RF link back to the 4 outlying sites (and locally, in cabinet, on wire to the Hub site TX). All are GPS clocked, so they transmit in sync. No matter where you are in the coverage area, you hear all traffic equally.

It actually works well. I think they are ready to move on to a bigger system one day soon, but this one has served them well for about 15 years. There is a phone line or level issue now and then, but the system is very forgiving with mobiles, so really portables is where you would notice one site being out.

They also have an alternate input PL on each site, so you can use just that repeater as a fallback. They also have 2 "tactical" repeaters which are single site...but rarely use them. They don't seem to know how to use anything but "channel 1". Once in a while someone use talkaround and thinks no one can hear them...lol....instead of using the simplex channel they have for car to car. It all comes down to training.

And...almost forgot about the "repeater-repeater". In the office building, there was poor portable coverage. So the radio shop has a different channel in the portables they can go to, and on a separate freq pair there is a 10 watt repeater, it is linked to a control base, which is setup like a mobile and talks into the main system. Any traffic over the 10w repeater goes direct to the other portables, and the system...likewise any system traffic goes over this 10w repeater too. The control base has a remote sitting by the console which serves as an alternate in case the console goes down, or the wireline from the console to the hub is out. I think the control base has talkaround in it too, just in case. Sounds like a mess...works good, and the audio is great, you would never know.
 
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TampaTyron

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Voters with transmit steering used to be (and may still be) how VHF Railroad communications were conducted. Engineer toned up the dispatcher. There would be a delay as the voter and TX steering components signaled an available dispatcher. Then the dispatcher would reply via the closest tower to the Engineer. TT
 

12dbsinad

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I'll go one more step...

My local Sheriff's system is a voted, simulcast system.

There are 5 sites...one is the "hub" where the voter is.

All 5 sites have a repeater, which is "split", in that the receiver sends it's signal back to the voter at the hub via a leased pair phone line, the voter decides which receiver has the best signal to noise ratio and "votes" it, then sends the audio, and control signals via an RF link back to the 4 outlying sites (and locally, in cabinet, on wire to the Hub site TX). All are GPS clocked, so they transmit in sync. No matter where you are in the coverage area, you hear all traffic equally.

It actually works well. I think they are ready to move on to a bigger system one day soon, but this one has served them well for about 15 years. There is a phone line or level issue now and then, but the system is very forgiving with mobiles, so really portables is where you would notice one site being out.

They also have an alternate input PL on each site, so you can use just that repeater as a fallback. They also have 2 "tactical" repeaters which are single site...but rarely use them. They don't seem to know how to use anything but "channel 1". Once in a while someone use talkaround and thinks no one can hear them...lol....instead of using the simplex channel they have for car to car. It all comes down to training.

And...almost forgot about the "repeater-repeater". In the office building, there was poor portable coverage. So the radio shop has a different channel in the portables they can go to, and on a separate freq pair there is a 10 watt repeater, it is linked to a control base, which is setup like a mobile and talks into the main system. Any traffic over the 10w repeater goes direct to the other portables, and the system...likewise any system traffic goes over this 10w repeater too. The control base has a remote sitting by the console which serves as an alternate in case the console goes down, or the wireline from the console to the hub is out. I think the control base has talkaround in it too, just in case. Sounds like a mess...works good, and the audio is great, you would never know.


We have a similar system here for the County Sheriff. It's a 5 site system, and they also have alternate PL's for single site stand alone selection, as each site is capable of full duplex operation regardless of anything else. This proved important as at one point the central site took a lightning hit. Units in the field switched to the respected site for their zone, and dispatch operated the backup control radios. Minus the central site, they still had decent comms using the stand alone repeaters until everything was repaired. Redundancy at it's best. Wait, is that even a word anymore?
 
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