On Thu, 7 May 2009, wd8chl wrote: > How about putting money into a project for a club repeater (including > buying crystals), installing it, and then after it's running, being > told to 'take it out we don't want to use that, we want something > anyone can work on', which turns out to be some made-for-ham junk?
That's the exact reason why I went with a Mastr II repeater instead of a hacked-together pair of GE Rangrs. While the Rangrs get the job done, trying to explain the whats and whys of what's actually happening in the machine is difficult. The time-out-timer is in the radio's software; the COS line is the Audio PA Enable line inverted, which is activated by the reciever's microprocessor (which itself does the PL detection). There's a basic level of competency required in building something to last ten or twenty years -- an assumption that the heirs will be able to work on the machine and that it will be possible to find someone who knows how. OTOH, far more "customization" has been done to GE Mastr IIs, where a radio shop would take the basic radio and then customize it in a non-standard way. We're into the appliance-operator era; hams who know how to solder are getting fewer and farther between. -- Kris Kirby, KE4AHR Disinformation Analyst
