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Reviews For: Arcom RC210

Category: Ham Repeater Controllers

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Review Summary For : Arcom RC210
Reviews: 36MSRP: 349
Description:
3 port repeater controller with natural speech and very reasonably priced
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.ah6le.net
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
15364.4
AG4TI Rating: 2009-03-11
Didn't work from the beginning Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
Bought Kenwood repeater and rc-210 from Arcom. They wired the cables. The repeater won't key up everytime while your talking. Sent it back and they kept it for 2 months and told wanted to know why I was using tone only. If you want to know if there are any problems with the controller check out their Yahoo Group RC-210 before you buy. Told me if it was in resellabe shape he would refund my money. Complete joke to deal with.
KD7CAO Rating: 2007-01-31
Good Hardware / Poor Documentation Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Although this is the first controller I have had extensive access to I find the hardware to be top rate. Documentation on the other hand seems to be lacking. Ken has been very helpful and timely on answering questions but, I think it would be wise to enlist the services of some experienced technical manual writers. Then have a person that knows nothing about repeater controllers try and configure the system. Now, I have experience operating technical gadgets but, this was a learning curve. Otherwise a great unit.
KD6HWC Rating: 2007-01-10
Features, low cost! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I've owned this guy for a short time now, but so far it has performed exactly how I want it to. I am using it on a low level garage repeater with IRLP and a remote base (the remote base will be replaced by Echolink sometime). The migration from a RLC-1 to the Arcom was a snap!

Ken was very helpful during the order/delivery stages and continues to be very helpful on the mailing list and takes care of his customers!

I'm keeping my eye on any further products coming from Arcom.
KC2GOW Rating: 2006-11-02
A LOT OF FEATURES Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
The RC-210 is one of the better/cheaper multi-port controllers on the market. Once you get through the configuration and learn all of the DO's and DON'Ts of the programming lines, it functions quite well. Sometimes I think that this thing has a mind of its own and can be kind of picky, it works well.

Only cons are the limits of the vocabulary/size of DVR, audio path limitations, and that it cannot multi-task. In this I mean that it does not have the ability to Identify/Send different messages/courtesy tones etc... on all three ports simultaneously.

K8DAV Rating: 2006-08-17
Excellent controller Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I thought I was going to have the problems I've seen written about but.....Nope.
It's been in operation a little more than a year and it's sailing along smoothly.
My initial problems were my own fault during setup. Would I buy another unit if I needed it? You bet!
N5ZUA Rating: 2006-06-23
all features work but some areas need improvement Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
The controller worked just fine out of the box. Setting the courtesy beeps is a little squirrelly compared to other controllers. I'm familiar with about a half dozen of the various models including Link Com, NHRC, MCC, & ICS. In my opinion, this model is designed to compete with the Link Com RLC-4 unit. Both offer macros and such, but the 210 behaves in unexpected (read not necessarily bad) ways, as in how the courtesy beeps play through each port. I wired 2 Motorola Maxtrac VHF radios to it for a 2 meter repeater on port one, a UHF Maxtrac to port two for a link radio, and an IRLP node to port three. After turning off all courtesy tones, everything works as expected. I gave up on trying to get the tones to work on one port and not another. If you buy this unit, the programming software IS A MUST or you will literally spend hours and hours trying to program it. With the software, you'll have it configured in ten minutes, even though sometimes the software is a bit squirrelly as well. While it is cheaper than an RLC-4, I'd probably pay the extra for the Link Com if I had it all to do over again.
N1ZPO Rating: 2006-04-01
Get one! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I have not used any other controllers and was not sure what one to get when I started looking. The reason I decided on the Arcom was I could not find anyone that had anything bad to say at all. In fact it was nothing but good things, not one complaint? Wow. So I gave Ken a call and asked a lot of questions. He answered all of them and spend a lot of time doing it.

The product is excellent! But the customer service is even better!
If you are on the fence go with an Arcom unit.

Also The windows programing software is well worth the money! In 5 min. you can see, and set EVERYTHING!

Thank You
KC2NFB Rating: 2006-03-19
arcom rc-210 the best!!! Time Owned: more than 12 months.
no question. the rc-210 is hands down the best controler on the market. from cost, function's, option's, and just ease of use it can't be beat. im using one with a set of maxtrac's. it was very easy to configure.

i'll say it again

the best the best the best!!!!
K1IW Rating: 2006-01-05
Good for the price, some limitations Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
Our club helped a local school radio club build their repeater, with the two clubs sharing one controller. Our club's repeater and a link radio went on two of the ports and the school's repeater on the third port. Our club runs multiple sites using SCOM 7K controllers, but because the 7K is no longer available we selected the RC-210 for this project. The RC-210 is an excellent value for the price, but we missed the extensive macro capability of the 7K. One other problem we found was that when the link receiver was active, it would mute the courtesy beep after the main receiver went inactive. I sent email to Ken about this. He said he would look into it, but we didn't hear anything further. The lack of courtesy beep was confusing to some of the users. In the end, we were able to locate a used 7K and will be replacing the RC210 with the older 7K within the next month. We are somewhat biased toward the 7K, as there were some operating procedures we were accustomed to that we could not repeat using the RC210. Used 7K's are difficult to come by, so you may want to consider the RC210. The 7K's successor is still in development, but based on our experience with the 7K vs. the RC210, we would definitely lean toward the new SCOM controller were it to be available by the time our next project comes along. SCOM's extensive macro capability really puts it in a class by itself when it comes to controlling complex systems. In the remaining product space, the RC210 is probably your best choice.
KA0OXH Rating: 2005-11-06
Best Value Full Feature Controller on the Market! Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
I own many of the full featured ham repeater controllers available since the early '80s including ACCs, FF-800, Many different link-Comms and others and the ARCOM RC-210 is the most impressive thus far for a full featured controller and the only one under $500 assembled, fully tested with LED rack mount and programming software. Ken fully supports his products with software instant updates. The real speech voice sounds better than the rest and the DVR is very user friendly to program. Any extra reciever needs like a NOAA weather radio or NASA select audio RX does not need a dedicated radio port like on some of the other controllers. My only other wish would be more than 3 radio ports for links or repeaters and Ken is already developing an 8 port controller to satify the needs a large site demands. I highly recommend this controller.