It was also a mysterious repeater. The trustee had an undeliverable address, and there was nothing to be found on the internet regarding the 'club' that operated it (St. Paul Emergency Amateur Radio System). Asking a few "insiders" about it produced only vague and unsure responses. I had given up trying to find out anything about it, such as hardware or tower height, much less who operates it. It was listed as an "open" repeater, but that's an almost meaningless distinction these days -- especially when it comes to anything involving the word "emergency". There are insipid trolls that haunt the half-dozen or so taxpayer-supported "emergency" repeaters in a constant effort to make sure that nobody uses them for anything other than "emergencies". So, they really aren't "open" repeaters. Still, I used the 442.600 from time to time to test UHF antennae, and basically forgot it until last month when a comment was left on the blog post about the .600 repeater in Maplewood:
The machine originated over 10 years ago as a cooperative effort between Ramsey County Emergency Services and the City of St. Paul. The repeater was moved to Maplewood when the site in St. Paul was no longer an option.There was no callsign or name given. There was no way to determine the commenter's status in the organisation, such as it may be, that operated the machine. Why is everyone that has anything to with this repeater completely incognito?
The repeater never had a lot of users, though the repeater is available for public use and available for emergency use. It has great coverage, and has had most of the equipment updated from when it was built.
I would also love to see more use, and one suggestion has been to have Metro Skywarn Spotters use it as a resource to talk to each other during severe weather season.
So much for the back-story. Last Thursday, I was home during the day and playing with the radio to see who is on during normal work hours. I was using a 1/4-wave UHF whip on top of the tripod/radial setup that I'd used at Aerials in the Park, so I threw out my sign on the .600 to see if that antenna arrangement could handle the relatively low frequency and distant location of the repeater.
Surprisingly, N0TNL (Matt) came back to my sign immediately. We talked for a while, and I asked him if he knew anything about who runs the repeater we were using. He supplied the usual "Ramsey County", "City of St. Paul", and "emergency services" vagueness that everyone else did. Certainly, nobody knew any names or any callsigns, which is unusual for repeaters in town. Among the "insiders", everyone knows everybody -- and probably too much, at that. But, in this case, there were only vague rumours that nobody was really ever sure about.
Matt and I talked for a while, as neither of us seemed to be very busy. It was a pleasant conversation, though I'm not very interested in the "emergency' and "public service" aspects of the hobby, as Matt is.
Toward the end of our QSO, another ham broke in. He had an irritated tone in his voice, and he refused to supply his name. He gave his sign as KB0SCD (in phonetics, BTW). That callsign is an defunct one from a club in North Dakota (K0LN).
The nameless angry dude with the fake callsign from another State was one of the aforementioned trolls dedicated to keeping emergency repeaters free of anything resembling actual use. He flatly stated that the repeater was owned by the City of Saint Paul Fire Department, as if that fact functioned as some kind of verbal "No Trespassing" sign. I asked if he ran it, and if he could confirm that it was in Maplewood. He ignored the first question, brushed over the second question with a brief grunt, and demanded to know the name and callsign of the person that had posted the comment about the .600 repeater on this blog. He was definitely not amused. It's as if the first rule about the 442.600 repeater is that you don't talk about the 442.600 repeater.
His surliness only increased when I told him that the person who left the comment didn't identify themselves. "So you don't know who sent you here?", he snarled, with obvious scepticism seething from his every word. I told him that I wasn't "sent" to the repeater at all. Since I was technically still in a QSO with Matt, I wished him well and closed. Matt closed with me.
The nameless angry dude with the fake callsign never closed. Apparently his job was done, as both of us were leaving. Once again, the identity of someone involved with the repeater had been kept secret. The repeater was once again clear to carry absolutely no traffic whatsoever, and the troll could return to his enjoyment of the silence. The repeater's secrets had been defended successfully.
I don't want to obsess over this repeater, but the other 'emergency' repeaters aren't secretive at all. I've spoken with several people about the 444.500 machine in Plymouth, and it's VHF twin on 146.700. Likewise, with the UHF .200 in Edina. Real people, with real names and real callsigns, have looked upon these installations and lived to tell the tale. There are trolls on these machines, too, but the notion that these repeaters' very existence should be kept secret is too ridiculous for even these trolls to entertain.
I'm deeply sceptical of the reasoning behind these repeaters' existence: that some disaster, calamity, or unrest will wipe out the internet, cellular, and land-line services - along with the billion-dollar trunked system that the real "emergency services" operate on - and that the fate of civilisation will hang on a few amateur repeaters that oddly remain in perfect order. The whole thing reeks of the paranoid delusions of "preppers", but it's a delusion that tends to work to the benefit of the hobby, in terms of getting municipalities to approve antenna sites for repeaters on public property.
There are certainly other repeaters out there to use, but nobody is holding two-hour conversational nets on these "emergency" machines, and nobody is refusing to clear the repeater in emergency situations. Certainly, the nameless troll with the fake callsign had no difficulty interrupting our conversation. Given the problems that so many of the local repeaters have in attracting regular users, it seems extremely doubtful that there's any "slippery slope" argument that can be made here to imply that allowing any amount of casual use will somehow explode into over-crowding.
For my part, I'd continue to use the 442.600 for casual use if there was someone east of the metro on UHF who couldn't get into the MARA .800 for some reason. Trolls be damned, if there's a reason to use it. Besides, it seems as if the people that do run it have no clear idea what they actually want to do with it.
No comments:
Post a Comment