In a discussion yesterday with N0YNT (Matt) and KD0KJI (Al) on the UHF .425, N0YNT revealed that a new VHF repeater is being tested for the Gopher Radio Club.
Details are still a bit sketchy, but the current scenario involves a site on the St. Paul U of M campus next to Falcon Heights, and operating on the 147.150 repeater pair. It may very well use a 160W power amplifier.
KD0KJI (Al) helped with the signal reports as Matt tested the machine from his home, and he confirmed that it was putting a signal on the air that was readable.
I'm less enthusiastic about the Falcon Heights site. Though it's definitely high ground, there isn't much of a tower there. Given the difficulty I've had accessing the other machines there, it could be that this new repeater ends up being a great option for those east of downtown Minneapolis, but only of marginal use for those of us here in the western suburbs.
While Matt did not explicitly state that the new machine would be cross-band linked to the UHF .425, he did not refute my implications regarding the possibility. I think that it would be safe to assume that it will have EchoLink, which would make such a cross-band capability quite simple to do.
UHF has experienced a minor resurgence in town of late, due to the easy availability of cheap dual-band radios and the relative ease of getting a repeater slot in the crowded spectrum. But what also has helped has been the cross-band capability of the HandiHam network. Those with UHF radios are no longer isolated from those on two metres, and nobody really knows which band someone is on when they are heard on the network. However, the coverage of the HandiHam UHF .650 is spotty and more geared to the eastern metro. The addition of the south-eastern UHF .325 and the south-western machine in Chaska don't help in the western, northern, and north-west areas.
The UHF .425 has phenomenal coverage and hardware, and Echolink access. Yet, it's not accessible to so many of the "two-metre only" hams found in the metro. In contrast to the HandiHam UHF .650, the .425 reaches the western suburbs easily. I can hit it reliably (though not full-quieting) with 2.5W and a rubber duck from inside of my condo in Plymouth. An eastern metro VHF link would be the perfect complement to the two networks' coverage.
HandiHam has VHF in the west, and UHF in the east-central. The Gopher Radio Club has UHF in the east-central, and will potentially have VHF in the east.
If this turns out to be just another standalone VHF machine in the metro. I'd have to question why it's being done. We have an incredible number of two metre machines already, specialising coverage in various niches, and duplicating coverage all over most of the metro. At a certain point, having a dozen or so VHF machines with no cross-band function just fragments the limited number of hams available at any given time into smaller and less-sustainable groups. Sure, every club wants to have their own repeater. But those clubs are shrinking and ageing badly, and struggling with money to pay for the antenna sites and keep their machines repaired. And those machines are often empty as superior coverage or loyalty to a particular club takes second place to easily-found activity.
We already have an excellent network of County-run repeaters for emergency use: the Edina, Plymouth, Golden Valley machines come to mind. These are powerful machines on strong, well-positioned towers, with power back-ups and security. The idea that we need a dozen or more other machines to provide redundancy in case of an emergency is ill-founded.
What we need is fewer repeaters (and "paper" repeaters), and higher-quality hardware and siting for those that remain. And more links between scattered machines, rather than more "local" and "hobby" repeaters.
Thirty years ago, we had a scarcity of coverage and over-burdened machines in the metro. Those days are gone. Now we have too many machines splitting up fewer hams into smaller cliques. This model was designed to be un-coordinated and encouraged individual fiefdoms only brought together by major issues such as SkyWarn and ARES.
Thirty years ago, there was no grand vision of how to proceed into the future as a metro-wide entity. Such a notion was scoffed at, in fact. While we have some very skilled and dedicated people to make the whole thing function, we have no strategy beyond putting up the greatest possible number of machines on the air -- even if they are on top of each other.
N0YNT has an insightful grasp of what is possible, in realistic terms, going in to the future. The problem is that creating a consensus as to the way forward is like herding cats.
No comments:
Post a Comment