[KYHAM] tone squelch etc (long)

[Fred Flowers]

Dave & everyone else whining about tone on repeaters,

You have most likely never owned a repeater.  I wont boor you with the 
details, however building and putting a repeater on the air is a big 
investment.  While I own, control it & have the power over who uses it, I 
don't believe in closed repeaters.  That being said I have tone on all three 
of my repeaters.  I do it to protect my investment.  I don't want 
co-channel, intermod & whatever other junk out there keying up my repeaters, 
burning up the PA's.  Tony & I have 4 repeaters linked.  They are linked to 
a group in TN.  This couldn't be done without tone.  We can't have one 
repeater locking up the whole system.

I don't understand why you people like to listen to the heterodyne in band 
openings.  I sure don't want some mobile, talking to a co-channel repeater, 
keying mine up.  My users don't want to hear that crap.

I've heard all kind of reasons not to tone.  Although none are valid.  The 
one about emergency comms is BS.  If one is not smart enough to use tone, 
that person is not smart enough to be involved.  The one about some new 
young ham not having a tone capable radio just knocked me down.  Stop 
pawning off your old junk on the new kids.  The one about someone on a fixed 
income not able to afford a new radio is the nut-cracker.  Go to a hamfest, 
buy a rig and give it to him.  I went to a hamfest over the weekend and saw 
nice 2 meter rigs with tone for $100.00 to $150.00.  Get together with a few 
guys or your club and do a good deed.  Get two, the kid needs one to replace 
the junk you sold him.

The only people with a dog in this fight are the repeater owners.  The users 
don't have a say.  Let it fly I have my flame suit on.
Fred Flowers
KF4QZN


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dave" <wa4qal at ix.netcom.com>
To: "Brandon Nuttall" <bcnuttall at yahoo.com>; <kyham at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2004 9:27 PM
Subject: Re: [KYHAM] tone squelch etc (long)


> Brandon Nuttall wrote:
>
> >Dave,
> >
> >--- wa4qal at ix.netcom.com wrote:
> >
> >
> >>I wonder what the source of the information is for
> >>that web-site.  I quickly
> >>found one glaring error on it (It has a 146.685
> >>machine in both Lexington
> >>and Georgetown, which obviously is in error.).
> >>
> >>
> >
> >I disagree that that is a "glaring error." First, most
> >people can hit the Georgetown 146.685 repeater from
> >Lexington with a 5 watt HT and a rubber duck.
> >Secondly, the frequency and offset are correct in both
> >instances.
> >
> >
>
> Well, I happened to find that error within about 15 seconds of bringing 
> the
> site up, so that makes it pretty glaring to me.  I could probably find 
> some
> other errors there if I wanted to take the time to study the list a bit,
> but I
> wasn't that interested in it.
>
> As for being able to bring up the Georgetown repeater with 5 Watts from
> an HT and a rubber duck, sure, that's probably possible from parts of
> Lexington.  But, I'm pretty sure that you couldn't do it from the southern
> part of Fayette county near the river.  On the other hand, you can bring
> the machine up from I-75 near Corinth, and, if you were thinking that
> the machine was in Lexington, I doubt if you'd even try from there.
>
> >As to the source of information, the source is amateur
> >radio operators. For example, if you return to the
> >artscipub.com listing of Lexington repeaters, you will
> >see that I have added a note stating the correct
> >location of the repeater. It was as simple as clicking
> >on the More link.
> >
>
> That's fine, but the problem is that not all repeater owners are that
> great about
> listing their information.  And, while the information can be corrected
> when an
> error is found, I'm sure that there are still errors in there that
> haven't been found
> yet.  But, probably more troublesome is the case when a repeater changes.
> In that case, the information is still out there saying that it exists
> on a certain
> frequency, with a certain tone, and it may not be there at all.  Sure,
> one or two
> of these won't be a catastrophe, but as the data degenerates more and 
> more,
> it becomes more problemmatic.  And, I won't even touch on the situation
> where
> someone adds incorrect information (e.g., a machine goes down for
> maintenance,
> and someone adds a comment that it's been taken down permanently).
>
> >It is sometimes a challenge to determine if and which
> >tone is in use. I have an HT that will scan for tones,
> >but I need to hear a QSO on the repeater to do it. I
> >found one solution on a repeater in Evansville,
> >Indiana. I had looked in the ARRL repeater book and
> >had the frequency programmed. When I keyed it, the
> >repeater IDed and announced that a tone of xxx.x was
> >in use. I couldn't bring up the repeater again until I
> >set the tone.
> >
> >
>
> I've seen (and could even build, if I was interested enough) a tone 
> decoder.
> Or, it's even possible to find a tone by brute force.  But, all of that
> takes
> time.  And, if I'm traveling cross country, I don't want to take the
> time to
> find out the tones necessary to access a machine.  Sometimes, it's nice to
> just put the rig on scan, and wait for it to lock in on a busy frequency.
> That's pretty painless now since you don't have to funble through a book
> (while driving), looking for the pair and tone combination (only to find
> that
> the information is stale).
>
>
> | This, of course, suggests a very simple solution.
>
> >Announce the tone frequency when the repeater IDs.
> >
> >
>
> Oh, if you'd only seen the bloody confrontations that I have about voice
> versus CW ids on repeaters that I have.  Some clubs and/or members are
> PASSIONATE about the type of ID that their machines have.  I'm not
> saying that either position is the correct one, and I can even sympathize
> with both sides.  But, how many hams out there are going to copy the tone
> frequency at 20 words per minute in CW?
>
> >Brandon
> >KG4RRI
> >
> >
>
> Dave
> WA4QAL
>
>
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