Imagine the fun we have at the Illinois Repeater Association meetings between the "Chicago" and "Downstate" guys? It's the same with politics too ;) Well, the last few meetings have been good, thanks greatly in part to the supurb job the IRA has done. Anyways, I a "downstate Chicago" guy, I live in the farmfields 45 miles south of the city. While I will not argue that there are some alligator systems in the city...and suburbs.... Be careful of acousing any of those machines of being "gluttons". I'm not sure which machines you had in mind, but probably the widest coverage 2m machine in the city is CFMC on 146.76. They have several reciever sites, and run modest power off one of the tallest buildings in the city- 45 miles away here at my qth running around mobile they are usually between 1/2 and full scale on an icom with a 5/8 nmo on the roof of the surburban. Of course I can access the system full quieting, so it's bretty balanced for the users in the greater metro area. Now- during a band opening I'm sure it can put out a good footprint. FYI- during an average opening in the morning or evining during the summer we can hear the downstate repeaters just fine as well. The corn fields don't stop much, the city is a different story. One of my uhf systems is in the cornfields south of the city, and it plays much farther to the south than it does to the north into the city. (omni antenna on top of a 300' tower) In comparason- one of the largest UHF systems in chicago, 16 recieve sites last I heard, is on one of the tallest buildings as well, and for the last few years has been running on exciter power (4-5 watts) that is being divided to three panel antennas (to put the footprint away from the lake), and on 1/3 or exciter power at that height from the panel antenna in any given direction it's very common to hear the output 70-80 miles away on a mobile with average conditions. Im sure on a good base 100+ miles is pretty easy, and during an opening, well, who knows. Does that make them a glutton? If you could put your antenna at 1300' AGL with a relativly short feed line, wouldn't you? There are issues in the metro areas & city with building penetration, intermod & general high levels of rf garbage, & topography around the city with a few "holes" and river valleys where it can be hard to recieve the talkout from the city. Skipp covered the rest well in his response. If there are specific machines you notice, please contact me directly, I would like to know which ones. I have a pretty good knowledge, and know people who have more knowledge of many of the boxes here, maybe I could help research this for you. I would just be careful of the glutton accousations, that's all. 73 Tom W9SRV
Al Wolfe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Having a very high-level flamethrower repeater around is not only > a great communications resource... if the hardware operates well > it's also impressive on your technical resume and a lot of fun to > operate. So in other words, it's just an ego trip. These repeaters are commonly known as Alligators. We in downstate Illinois suffer from the two meter glut of RF out of Chicago. There they have repeaters there with dozens of receiver sites and multi-kilowatt ERP transmitters, usually running about half scale 150 miles away. But we cannot get into their systems running legal power. But they say they have "balanced systems"? What a crock! If a repeater is full scale and I can't get into it with 150 watts then something is very wrong! Al, K9SI Yahoo! Groups Links __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
