I can get you Motorola HT1250s refurbed with 6mos warranty for ~220....full or limited keypad.. For fire dept, you will not only need your channels, but any nearby or mutual aid channels in it if you respond to other VFD's requests...also good to have any mutual aid channels to talk to police, EMS, etc....(Texas does). Otherwise, look at single band Part 90 radios...dont bother with dual band unless you have some emergency groups on UHF (most will be 800 or VHF these days...Houston just moved all their FD to 700...I am not sure if the VFDs in the county outside Houston's city limits stayed UHF or not)

Go with a GE MII/Exec II or MVP.....better performance than a MICOR on 220....and better audio.
BTW KW did make a 220 repeater. The TKR-720 was available on the 216-225MHz range...but not sure how many were sold and they are rare to find in that range. Most 720 models are 144-174.

Steady carrier is a misnomer if you are running SSB....what carrier?? Its 40-50db down so good luck.....there is a way to monitor the PTT of the radio internally and with a 555 or similar timer, if it see the radio in xmit for longer than set time (3mins to keep within the rules), it would kill power to the radio or reboot everything.....The ACC Shackmaster SM100 back in the 80s had over the air or phone line remote control....but limited the xmtr to 3 mins unless it saw a particular DTMF digit once within the time setting...if such a digit didnt appear, the transmitter was turned off...(for those wanting to talk longer than 3 mins, get a tape recorder and talk to yourself...or listen to Rush Limbaugh lol)

Which is not inline with remotely controlled station rules...if you lose control, the station is supposed to terminate transmission in 3 mins....not 20...see Part 97.213(b) Provisions are incorporated to limit transmission by the station to a period of no more than 3 minutes in the event of malfunction in the control link.

In internet remote control, best to have a watchdog timer that pulses the box at the remote site every two mins...if the box fails to see a simple ping or whatever, terminate transmitter..

Best thing to do for dialup is monitor loop current or listen for dialtone..or look for loss of line voltage in CPC (Calling Party disconnect Control)...if it sees it go away, cut the transmitter....radio station monitor dial up boxes use this all the time..so do answer machines (for those who dont use voicemail)...its a 300ms loss of voltage and current on the line when the distant party hangs up.....however, if the Central Office screws up, the line could stay locked on...

best to have dial up for backup to the internet or a UHF rcvr so someone local can terminate it for you

Same is true in the US under FCC Part 97.....However, knowing FCC inspectors as I do (one is an old high school friend of mine), if the bootlegger can be tracked down by talking to them, the FCC would not cite the legit hams....only the illegal operator...it's happened before.

I have had some European calls on one of my repeaters over the decades....IDing legit and the users talked with them with no issues; Oh, the "portable" suffix is not necessary...(BTW the format is different for Canadian hams..they ID with their call FOLLOWED by /Wx as a suffix)

If the Tech is transmitting above 51.0MHz on FM and is crossbanded by a rptr on that band to 10m, it IS legal....but no, a Tech cannot transmit direct on 29MHz FM...

The HY-Tower is a HyGain antenna, NOT a Rohn product.....The HY-Tower looks nothing like a HDX tower..looks more like the 20/25G series (is tubular)..and has the stubs along the side for the different bands

The HBX series are meant for light wind loads.....TV antennas and small VHF/UHF yagis..if you guy it, it could support a little more....using it as a support for a wire antenna will be excellent...In areas where you get hurricanes, etc, I wouldnt recommend a HBX when a 25G or better can be found for reasonable prices..

Feed the audio out of the PC spkr into the mic with the rig in FM mode....you cannot simply transmit a MP3 file over the air....without it decoded back to analog!

Remember, in territorial waters of another country, you are bound by their rules....in Europe, 2m is only 144-146 and UHF ham is 430-440........even on board operation could be an issue depending on the ship's registry....check all rules before the cruise....ARRL HQ can help.

Kenwood supplies the programmer with 12V from the SB line inside the radio..If a 6 pin plug is inserted into a 8 pin jack for programming, sometimes the SB ckt gets shorted and blows a pc strip or SMD jumper...poor design IMHO...they should have put some resistor limit protection there....when a radio cannot be read, chances are the SB ckt has been blown and its a PITA to repair in some cases..

True, just at the moon there is a 4-5 second delay one way....at Mars, its a 12 minute delay one way....packet or a digital mode would be best...voice comm would not be very feasible...which really complicates the landing sequence.....mission control would not know if the landing was successful until after it happened....but that 7 min entry into the Martian atmosphere are know as the 7 minutes of terror...with the robots, if we lose the telemetry, its gone...on manned mission, its possible the screams of terror, etc would be heard...after it happened....still, I would chance it..the biggest problem is GETTING there..cosmic rays and other issues may make a flight to Mars highly unsafe for decades to come...the moon was a pond jump...Mars is the ocean voyage..in a dingy

I used to do Telecom for Entergy-Gulf States in Texas and was the RFI/TVI guy for our territory north of Houston...Once in Huntsville, TX (60m or so N of Houston), got a complaint from a resident that our lowband two way was interfering with his FM reception of a station from Houston (actually, the main FM sites in Houston are in Missouri City, SW of downtown; 2000ft towers)..swapped Micor base stations and could not find a problem with the main unit..yet he was still having issues with the backup online..(he was a mile or so west of the tower)...Spectrum analyzer showed both units clean on the dummy load..however, 2x the freq of the base station was almost dead on the FM channel)...had my 220 HT with me and at the tower site, noticed a lot of RF noise on 220..found there was a BIG cable TV line leak right there...and our signal was overloading their amps..creating the second harmonic which rode the cable to his house and wiped out the FM station....A call to the cable folks and a friend at the Houston FCC quickly got things fixed...ingress with CATV systems can be a pain!

If the club is incorporated, the board meetings have to be open to the membership....unless they go into executive session. Check the Attorney General rules of your state for more info.

They cannot keep out members if they are incorporated. They MAY be able to keep non members out except press members.....

Then it is likely NOT the controller..sounds like a heater thermostat or possibly an arcing lightning arrester outside on the transformer. This can happen when the temp gets low with a dry wind and dries out loose wiring connections, etc. You could stand outside the building at night and look for any flashes of light or look for signs of arcing on the electrical system...The conditions you mention all point to those two possible sources..I doubt it is a problem in the rptr itself with control card pins, etc...

However running a rptr in COS mode will allow such problems to happen. For 2m and UHF rptrs, running in PL/CTCSS mode these days is no big deal...all modern radios can encode PL so I dont see why they insist on COS..I could see 220 or a 6m rptr in COS (though COS on a 6m box is just asking for trouble from noise which is worse than on 2m)...with the advent of more 220 synthesized radios, even that is not a problem on 220 anymore (running PL)...the argument for keeping it in COS mode is a poor one at that.