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Author Topic: Eary commercial 2M repeater manufacturers  (Read 434 times)

HAMHOCK75

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Eary commercial 2M repeater manufacturers
« on: October 18, 2020, 11:52:13 PM »

I found this old thread recently,

https://www.eham.net/community/smf/index.php/topic,81588.msg582007.html#msg582007

Does anyone know who the first commercial manufacturers of 2M FM repeaters where?
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WA9AFM

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Re: Eary commercial 2M repeater manufacturers
« Reply #1 on: October 19, 2020, 06:30:04 AM »

When repeaters started gaining popularity in the amateur community, most were commercial/business band repeaters converted to amateur frequencies.  Motorola, RCA, and GE gear seemed to be the most common.

Repeaters specifically built for the amateur service didn't start appearing till the late '70s.
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WB8VLC

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Re: Eary commercial 2M repeater manufacturers
« Reply #2 on: October 19, 2020, 10:14:56 AM »

Spectrum and Hamtronics were some of the dedicated 2 meter ham repeater Mfg's that I remember from the 1970's but most of the long lasting trouble free ones were Moto, GE and RCA equipment converted to ham use as mentioned by WA9AFM.

Spectrum and Hamtronics made other ham band repeaters for 6, 220 and 440.
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W1VT

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Re: Eary commercial 2M repeater manufacturers
« Reply #3 on: October 19, 2020, 12:50:52 PM »

http://www.repeater-builder.com/rbtip/index.html
We have over 10,000 publicly-accessible files occupying over 11 GB of server space. About 50% are PDFs, about 36% are JPGs and GIFs, and about 11% are HTML files. All of this is freely downloadable information, and our server transfers (i.e. downloads) over 250 GB per month!
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K5LXP

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Re: Eary commercial 2M repeater manufacturers
« Reply #4 on: October 19, 2020, 05:07:09 PM »

Commercially I'm aware of repeaters made of "research line" transmitter and receiver "strips" which were a chassis scheme that was used in base stations and mobiles of the day, 1950's.  I also recall they were "wide" deviation, 15kHz instead of 5kHz.  The earliest commercial unit I've ever serviced was an upright cabinet VHF based on research line strips circa 1960's, it was either built or converted to narrow deviation when I saw it.  It would be interesting to learn when Motorola offered a factory configured repeater vs something built from parts in the field.

Mark K5LXP
Albuquerque, NM
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NA4IT

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Re: Eary commercial 2M repeater manufacturers
« Reply #5 on: October 20, 2020, 04:28:15 AM »

HiPro was a later company that made RX and TX module boards, as well as amplifier add ons, and even complete repeaters. They were simple to work on, all discrete components, no surface mount stuff.
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N2AYM

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Re: Eary commercial 2M repeater manufacturers
« Reply #6 on: October 21, 2020, 01:21:51 PM »

Commercially I'm aware of repeaters made of "research line" transmitter and receiver "strips" which were a chassis scheme that was used in base stations and mobiles of the day, 1950's.  I also recall they were "wide" deviation, 15kHz instead of 5kHz.  The earliest commercial unit I've ever serviced was an upright cabinet VHF based on research line strips circa 1960's, it was either built or converted to narrow deviation when I saw it.  It would be interesting to learn when Motorola offered a factory configured repeater vs something built from parts in the field.

Mark K5LXP
Albuquerque, NM

GE Noted that in March 1933
Bayonne, New Jersey believed to have the first two-way police radio system.
Lieutenant Vincent Doyle applied for two frequencies in the 30 to 40 megacycle
band in 1932. These were granted and he established the system using REL AM equipment.

For Motorola I think it was in 1939 but I can't find the article i read it in.
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K4JJL

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Re: Eary commercial 2M repeater manufacturers
« Reply #7 on: November 09, 2020, 08:00:24 AM »

HiPro was a later company that made RX and TX module boards, as well as amplifier add ons, and even complete repeaters. They were simple to work on, all discrete components, no surface mount stuff.

Reliability was a huge issue with these.  After fixing the PA and exciter a dozen times on a VHF model, I finally ripped it out and replaced it with a 30-year-old GE Mastr II.
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WB5ITT

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Re: Eary commercial 2M repeater manufacturers
« Reply #8 on: January 25, 2021, 02:35:18 PM »

VHF Engineering was probably the first commercially made for amateur rptrs....Standard was bought by early groups but it was a commercial model that could tune down to 146 range and not really marketed to the amateur community. Spectrum and Hamtronics (both gone) came along long after VHF EGR was around...Same for HiPRO.....
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KE6JZ

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Re: Eary commercial 2M repeater manufacturers
« Reply #9 on: January 31, 2021, 08:08:20 AM »

Also, Micro Control Specialties sold Receiver and Exiter/PA boards/modules  ready to go for the "roll your own " crowd. They sold boards for all the Ham bands up to 900 Mhz.  We had a 220 Repeater in service for over 35 years made from MCS modules and it was pretty darn reliable until it burned up in a wildfire last year.
  We also had a 220 repeater built from Spectrum Communications boards/modules. It was nearly as reliable as the Micro Control Specialties repeater. Lost that one in the same fire too.
   Had to pretty much roll your own repeater if you wanted to get on the 220 band back in the early 1980's. No commercially available 220 repeaters until Icom offered one in about 1988 or so. And it was
pricey , around $2000 as I recall. 
73,
Ke6jz
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