Steve S. Bosshard (NU5D) wrote: > If old Joe's repeater were usable and folks were making use of it by all > means leave it alone. Poor old Joe's repeater is not working so well > with a bad antenna, and it only has 2 folks that make contact for a > couple of minutes a day. The folks wanting the digital repeater could > help fix Joe's antenna and get it back in shape, but Joe don't want to > mess with it. If they get is back in shape they have a 20 Khz FM > repeater not much different than the others in town. If they partner > with Joe and upgrade to digital, depending on whether they occupy the > middle of the channel, or offset up or down 6.25 Khz, they can restore > Joe's system to a ?better? system, and make room for one more repeater > in the area.
While I have no interest in putting a D-Star system on-air, I agree with Steve's sentiment that people wanting to put things on-air in crowded bands can almost ALWAYS find a limping/dead system that needs some help. And unless the owner is a total jerk (happens... what-do-ya-do?), if a group of people approached Old Joe with a reasonable "upgrade" plan to digital, and perhaps even offered to BUY OLD JOE A RIG for that new mode... he'd be a proponent and HAPPY to participate, in an awful lot of cases. Old Joe is probably PROUD of his old, tired, beat-down repeater... that's the part that a lot of people forget. Back when Old Joe built it, he had more money, more time, and the technology was probably harder to deal with, and he didn't even have access to test gear! He's not going to toss his hard work out without feeling INVOLVED and APPRECIATED by the newbies, but if they play their cards right -- he'll be their best ALLY, and will start spreading the word about the "new repeater on the block"... ESPECIALLY if those building it don't mind leaving Old Joe's CALLSIGN on it. There's some basic "How to make friends and influence people" type stuff going on here, that new builders seem to think aren't important... Want to REALLY impress Old Joe, fire up a mixed-mode Quantar with P25 on his pair, buying whatever new antennas/hardline/duplexer... whatever it takes to get it to perform well. You can't as easily do this with D-Star... You probably have to buy Old Joe a radio or two. But with P-25 mixed-mode repeaters, you can have a "transition" process for Old Joe and his friends with a mixed-mode repeater for a while... announce a date in which you're going to shut down the analog side of things... talk up the digital side... etc. You don't get the benefit of the smaller utilization of bandwidth at first, but Old Joe's repeater wasn't going anywhere anyway, and now you've got a dual-usage scenario that works. (This "idea" leaves out a lot... like the fact that D-Star's ability to automatically link person-to-person via Internet gateways and callsigns blows anything currently available at a reasonable price for P25 out of the water for hams... for the time being, anyway... but it's just meant to be an example of "thinking outside of the box".) Nevertheless, whatever you do -- work with Old Joe and not against him... again, he's got a personal, EMOTIONAL, connection with that repeater... that you have to take into account when trying to find a place to put something new. Nate WY0X
