Matt (W6KGB), I remember back in the early 70's when I was in college, a couple of us guys made a long bus trip from Southern Oregon down to Fresno in May, just a couple of weeks after the annual Fresno Hamfest. 2-Meter Repeaters were just really catching on in the rest of the country, and there was a special "FM West", I believe it was called, hamfest in Fresno. I remember Wayne Green from _73_ Magazine attended the event and spoke at the banquet. He was pushing 220 MHz at that time, and I still have a 220 MHz T-shirt that I got from him at the event.
While we were there, I remember that we saw a GRONK van, with a wooden rack in the back that had about six Motorola Motracs in it (really high-tech stuff at that time!) and a bunch of control heads, speakers and mics up front, and the roof covered with antennas. Needless to say, we poor college students, who were barely able to afford a one-channel 2-Meter Motorola 80D were quite impressed! We still talk about it once in a while to this day. It was a great hamfest, and we went back to Oregon all enthused about putting up our own 146.94 Repeater, as soon as we could afford it. It was a great day when we bought an old Motorola Sensicon "A" receiver, the matching 60-watt transmitter and power supply, and built up a COR copy of the Motorola tube-type COR circuit (out of "The Red Book".) Anyone who has been involved with Amateur FM back in the 70's will know what the "Red Book" and "Yellow Books" were. Of course, such luxuries like Heliax, Stationmaster antennas, Duplexers, etc. were out of the question. But the repeater was born. Most radios back then in our area (if you had a two-channel radio) had room for 146.76 Simplex and the 146.34/146.94 Repeater pair. In Oregon, there were four - 146.94 Repeaters across the State, and a ham group in Southern Oregon built up tone burst boxes - each repeater used a different tone burst. The hand-built, hand-tuned (hand picked capacitors for the oscillator using an 88 mh. toroid) units were sold for $25 each to the Southern Oregon Repeater Assn. members. I still have mine! There was one UHF Repeater in Oregon that I know of back then - across the State up in Portland. Please excuse the off-topic rant, just seeing the GRONK note reminded me of the fun we had when ham radio FM was just taking off, and how some of the Southern California people were really going all out with real high-tech installations. We could never have foreseen what the FM Repeater activity would become in later years. 73, Larry, K7LJ Original Message: ----------------- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 15:50:13 -0800 To: Repeater-Builder@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [Repeater-Builder] Re: Micor 412.XXXX repeater and SyntorX mobile 420-430MHz is the site-to-site /linking/ band here in SoCal, *not* a mobile relay/repeater subband. We've had active links on the band for about 40 years. Due to the concentration of radios in our area, it would neither be practical nor desirable to place repeaters in the 420-430 subband again. There actually were some repeaters in this subband many years ago, but these were all phased out by the mid-80s at absolute latest (to my knowledge). Things are rather complex here as well, beyond the raw numbers. A number of issues come to mind, some of the most important being transmitters & receivers ending up <1MHz or even <100KHz from each other, should 420 'repeaters' be put at hilltop sites. It'd cause one big mess! Juggling link frequencies is plenty of work as it is. No site follows a single regionwide bandplan, but rather each site has its own bandplan. Other areas of the country have relatively little utilization in this subband. As such, I can see its appeal & practicality in those areas. NorCal would have the same basic problem as SoCal. There's both a lack of real room & a general incompatibility, since mobile relay operation is essentially counter to the purpose of this subband. It's good to experiment & make use of equipment, but we should be careful & courteous as well. 73, -Matt W6KGB The GRONK Radio Network At 02:47 PM 11/8/2005 -0000, you wrote: >Hi Paul, >Why not put them on the 420-430 MHz amateur band? > >Several states now have 420 MHz fm voice (non-atv) repeaters. > >Texas has six, Virginia has two, Ohio has two itinerent 420 machines >that appear at Dayton Hamvention every year, and a bunch in SoCal is >working to coordinate one now in the Los Angeles area. I have heard >of several more under construction. > > >My local machine is on 420.050 out / 426.050 in w/136.5 Hz tone. >Been on the air for four years not without any interference issues >with local ATV ops. > > >73, >Mark Cobbeldick, KB4CVN >Monroe, VA > > >ALSO SEE: ><http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AR420MHz-FM/> Yahoo! Groups Links -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Repeater-Builder/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
