Pages: 1 [2] 3 4   Go Down

Author Topic: Early days of repeater use  (Read 30948 times)

N9NRA

  • Member
  • Posts: 7
RE: Early days of repeater use
« Reply #15 on: April 14, 2012, 08:51:45 PM »

Hey there, just was reading this, and i can kinda recall hearing some of those old repeaters, used to hear a schoolmate from my hoghschool club (from the Wisconsin School For the Visually Handicapped in Janesville, WI, i was too young to join and it died before i was old enough unfortunately) talking on one that was up in the Janesville area.  Question for ya, anyone here happen to recall if they had PL access back then, or did they use "whistle-up" access?  I can recall reading an article about it in an old issue of QST that i have here in my shack, it mentiones something about needing a "whistle" tone of a certain frequency to open the machine up.  Thoughts?  73.  N9NRA
Logged

WB2WIK

  • Member
  • Posts: 21885
RE: Early days of repeater use
« Reply #16 on: April 16, 2012, 09:46:50 AM »

You can't "whistle up" a CTCSS ("PL") activated system, at all.

That works only for "tone burst" activated systems, which are popular in Europe but not in the U.S.  The tone burst opens the system with a single burst of a high frequency tone (like 1750 Hz), so a "whistle" can often make that work.

Our systems here are almost entirely CTCSS at much lower frequencies and the tone is required continuously.
Logged

KK9CQ

  • Member
  • Posts: 6
RE: Early days of repeater use
« Reply #17 on: April 17, 2012, 09:34:48 PM »

I realize the post is about repeaters, but after reading these comments, I re-call the old days of "running a phone patch" on HF. Sort-a miss that too.

Bob
Logged

W0FM

  • Member
  • Posts: 2080
RE: Early days of repeater use
« Reply #18 on: April 19, 2012, 11:26:35 AM »

My first exposure to repeaters was when Tom Fischel, KØPJG stopped to show me his VW beetle with a GE Progline (I think) commercial FM low-band transceiver installed in it.  He had modified it for 6 Meters and he and some friends had a 6 Meter repeater operating here in the St. Louis area.  The 6M FM rig's control head was mounted on the dashboard of Tom's beetle and above it, in a Bud box, was a DTMF pad Tom built for repeater autopatch.  I believe the early repeaters in our area were all carrier squelch (open).

I recall thinking how silly Tom's beetle looked with the 6M whip with ball and spring mount on the back bumper.  Of course, it wasn't so silly anymore after I built up an old commercial rig for 6M of my own and installed a 6M halo on the back bumper of my '57 Chevy. 

"Hello Mom?  Guess where I'm talking to you from.....";o)

Funny how your view point changes when you are viewing something at a much "closer" distance.

Terry, WØFM
Logged

WD4AOG

  • Posts: 10
    • HomeURL
RE: Early days of repeater use
« Reply #19 on: April 27, 2012, 07:23:09 AM »

2 meter phone patch was a huge draw for me in the mid 70's.  That is what lured me into the hobby.  I recall our club having 2 repeaters on a broadcast tower and having to have an additional receiver on the output frequency.  In those days, if someone was on your output frequency, your repeater could not come up and interfere with them thus the need for the system to monitor the output before transmitting.

I also recall one bright fellow who programmed a Commodore Pet computer to control both machines.  With TouchTone pads, you could make an autopatch or play a couple of welcome tapes from broadcast cart machines.  That was VERY cool back then. 

The same guy, Jack, KB4B, helped me start a repeater using his BASIC code modified for my one machine and his schematic for the computer-to-repeater interface.  He even threw in most of the parts and charged nothing for any of it.  I added some additional features like being able to tone up NASA Select audio so that we could listen to the space shuttle via my backyard C-band dish and I also made use of one of the "voices" in the computer to generate the CW id.  The machine consisted of 2 Icom 22-S transceivers, some VHF Engineering 220mhz gear and a couple of yagis (to link the split sites), 2 Hustler G6 antennae and a Commodore 64.  Audio mixing was accomplished with an old Radio Shack stereo audio mixer, left channel for audio to the repeater, right channel for audio to the phone line.  Some simple EQ on each input allowed me to have very nice audio unlike some other linked repeaters that sounded "tinny."  The whole machine was as ugly as a mud fence but worked beautifully.

A marine deep cycle battery on constant charge ran a voltage inverter which, in turn, powered the station and provided continuous operation when AC power failed.  Not the most efficient power chain but it never failed once in the many years the repeater was on the air.
Logged

KK9H

  • Member
  • Posts: 26
RE: Early days of repeater use
« Reply #20 on: April 27, 2012, 09:52:52 AM »

I grew up in the Chicago area and while a senior in high school in early 1970, I was introduced to 2M FM by my "Elmer" WB9OUD. At that time, there were two active repeaters on tall buildings in the city. Both were quite busy most of the time and fun to listen to on a VHF-Hi tuneable receiver I had. A ham that was retiring to Florida and selling a 2-channel Motorola 41V that he had modified to operate on 146.94 simplex (the precursor to 146.52) and one of the repeaters. It was in excellent shape, offered at a price I could afford, so I bought it. It took a bit of doing, with my father's help, to get that thing installed in our car with all the cables running from the trunk to the dashboard and battery, but we did it. I had a ball with that radio. It worked great and it didn't hurt that it looked like an "official" police radio either. Later I went to college in Tennessee and bought a Regency HR2B which I loaded up with crystals so it would work repeaters located along the way on my trips to and from school. The nine hour journey went much more quickly having that rig in my car too. One thing that I remember so well was how many cities had 146.34/.94 repeaters back then. They were everywhere which was great because I only needed one set of crystals in my HR2B for use in so many different cities. PL was not in common use at that time so it was fun to see how often you could key the mike and bring up two or more repeaters at once, especially if you elevated on a mountain somewhere. Great memories from the early 1970's.
Logged

KG4NEL

  • Member
  • Posts: 543
RE: Early days of repeater use
« Reply #21 on: May 13, 2012, 06:04:43 PM »

You can't "whistle up" a CTCSS ("PL") activated system, at all.

That works only for "tone burst" activated systems, which are popular in Europe but not in the U.S.  The tone burst opens the system with a single burst of a high frequency tone (like 1750 Hz), so a "whistle" can often make that work.

Our systems here are almost entirely CTCSS at much lower frequencies and the tone is required continuously.

Reminds me of the old stories of whistles, and then "blue boxes" being used to access tone-encoded long distance phone systems :)



Logged

K7LZR

  • Posts: 395
    • HomeURL
Re: RE: Early days of repeater use
« Reply #22 on: December 02, 2021, 07:51:17 AM »

I think the 1970's were the real "heyday" of ham repeaters.   There seemed to be about 100 active users for every repeater, All having a great time, Including fooling with autopatch, Allowing telephone calls from your mobil!  LONG before the days of cellphones!

Nowadays it seems there are about 100 repeaters for every user, And no one has fun anymore.

Exactly.
Logged

K0UA

  • Member
  • Posts: 9589
Re: RE: Early days of repeater use
« Reply #23 on: December 02, 2021, 08:05:02 AM »

With HF you have the ability to talk to a wide range of people located all over the world. In addition, working DX and contests successfuly takes some degree of skill. HF can offer the challenge that is missing in 2M repeaters. IMHO it's not much of a challenge to press the PTT button and say "AA4PB listening". In the early days when you had to cobble togther your own equipment for 2M it offered a technical challenge that kept things interesting.

Yeah that is true to an extent, I started with old Motorola junk that weighed a ton, and took work to keep it on the air, BUT even after all of us had compact Japanese 2 meter gear, the participation and fun level was still very high. As said above you always had hundreds of people to talk to any time of the day or night. Then the changes happened. Some hapless people decided that a 2nd repeater was needed. The splintering began. Then soon the 3rd 4th and upteenth repeater was needed. To the point that there is a repeater for each licensed ham, and each ham monitors his own repeater and NEVER has to talk to anyone else. Instead of one nice big fat "watering hole" with hundreds of people all listening and communicating on that one good repeater, we have hundreds of repeaters. Total Balkanization. Totally useless. I knew several years ago when I threw a 2 meter rig into the company car and took a trip from Missouri to Dallas Texas and back and keyed up and identified on dozens of repeaters and did not make even ONE QSO that the jig was up. 2 meters was a vast wasteland. Now someone please tell me why this happened?
Logged
73  James K0UA

W1BR

  • Member
  • Posts: 4422
Re: Early days of repeater use
« Reply #24 on: December 02, 2021, 08:35:40 AM »

On the old MTARA K1ZJH repeater we had interstate truck drivers active 24/7, salesmen on the road all day chatting and keeping the activity levels up. Quite a few husband/wife teams as well passing routine family stuff (get a loaf of bread, etc.) or their for the autopatches.  Club had well over 300 active members. We had nets with 100 check ins on Wednesday nights. Now they are ghost repeaters... IDing and no one there.... also, many, if not most, of the old stalwarts have either passed away or moved to warmer climates.
Logged

K0WA

  • Member
  • Posts: 123
Re: Early days of repeater use
« Reply #25 on: December 02, 2021, 08:50:01 AM »

Out here in Kansas, they used a lot of GE radios as repeaters.  Most of the out of Santa Fe RR when the changed out radios.  Lots of 6146 tubes hanging around because the Prog Line used those in the final.  Lots of repeaters were on broadcast towers but quite a few were on grain elevators.   But thet would go for Mike's out here in the flat.
Logged

W0RW

  • Member
  • Posts: 70
    • homeURL
Re: Early days of repeater use
« Reply #26 on: December 02, 2021, 09:45:28 AM »

Check out W6AQY, 1966 2M FM repeater in CQ Magazine:
 “W6AQY, Early VHF FM Mountain Top Repeater in Southern Calif”,
Dec. 2019, p. 42 - 43.
It was a battery powered Motorola running 5W at 3,500 feet.
Paul   w0rw
« Last Edit: December 02, 2021, 09:48:06 AM by W0RW »
Logged

WA9AFM

  • Member
  • Posts: 978
Re: Early days of repeater use
« Reply #27 on: December 02, 2021, 09:47:34 AM »

Helped standup the first repeater in Duluth, MN in '71; 34/94 located at one of the television transmitter buildings up on 'the ridge'.  That was also during the regime of Probst Walker of 'FCC enforcement' fame.  He had some many convoluted rules, you were almost afraid to say anything that even approached 'prohibited transmissions' lest you would be cited.
Logged

N2AYM

  • Member
  • Posts: 375
Re: Early days of repeater use
« Reply #28 on: December 02, 2021, 10:58:44 AM »

I know for most of us repeater use came to be in the 70`s. That`s when it really was popular. Recently I read that Steve,WB2WIK had a repeater set up in 1966. For anyone that operated back then what was it like? How many machines/people were on then? Was it just 2m? Thanks,Mike.

This era started for me in the mid 70's to which there were about 6 or 7 2m pairs populated in the cnj area
and most of them had excellent coverage, later on about a decade or so some of us started experimenting
with with 440mhz equipment and we quickly learned about the hi power paging transmitter interference
and how to reduce it with either bp or notch filters.
Logged

W7XTV

  • Member
  • Posts: 1269
Re: Early days of repeater use
« Reply #29 on: December 02, 2021, 11:29:14 AM »

Helped standup the first repeater in Duluth, MN in '71; 34/94 located at one of the television transmitter buildings up on 'the ridge'.  That was also during the regime of Probst Walker of 'FCC enforcement' fame.  He had some many convoluted rules, you were almost afraid to say anything that even approached 'prohibited transmissions' lest you would be cited.

A. Prose (not Probst) Walker's reign of error during the Nixon/Ford years almost destroyed repeaters.  To his credit, however, he was the first to propose what became the 30, 17, and 12 meter bands.

I managed to get a repeater call (WR7AEV) for the short-range repeater I built as a 1974 college project only by doing the minimum:  Submitting official US Gummint tropo maps (two were necessary in my case) showing the elevation in 8 directions, 2 thru 10 miles from my home QTH.  The repeater was under local control -- radio control required additional paperwork and FCC authorization.  It only ran about 5 watts output, good for 10 miles range tops.  There was some additional stuff I had to file that I don't remember now. 

I kept the repeater license long after I finished the project, until it expired in 1979, but I never put another one up.  Even by then, there were too many repeaters on the air.
Logged
He speaks fluent PSK31, in FT8...  One QSO with him earns you 5BDXCC...  His Wouff Hong has two Wouffs... Hiram Percy Maxim called HIM "The Old Man..."  He is... The Most Interesting Ham In The World!
Pages: 1 [2] 3 4   Go Up