VHF DMR coming to the metro

At yesterday's MRC (MN Repeater Council) meeting, an issue was on the agenda that usually doesn't come up. There was a two-metre repeater frequency pair that a club in Dakota County had given up, and was available to be re-assigned. This is pretty rare, as all of the slots for VHF repeaters are tenaciously held on to, and even death isn't necessarily sufficient grounds to lose a slot. There is a waiting list for frequency pairs, and the first guy in line passed on the available slot because he wanted something in the 145 MHz range. 

And so the slot went to K0LAV (Paul E.), the guy behind at least a dozen MN repeaters including the 146.850 multi-receive repeater. I spoke with him on the air (444.800+) last night while I tested a new UHF antenna, and congratulated him on getting the VHF frequency pair. 

The slot is the 147.990 / 147.390 pair at the top of the two-metre band, where he will put a VHF DMR repeater on the air using a CTCSS tone of 98.5 Hz. He's in a bit of quandary over whether to make it a hybrid (both analogue and digital) or a digital-only repeater. I'd like to throw the question out to the community and find out if there's enough interest to support a VHF digital-only repeater. The issues, as I understand them, are as follows:

• A hybrid repeater won't have any internet link to other Talk Groups, due to the restrictions of DMR MARC. Imagine D-Star without reflectors. That's what the hybrid option would be like. A digital-only repeater would be able to be linked to the rest of the world, and also to the UHF DMR repeater in St. Paul.
• A digital-only repeater won't have the use of the remote receive site in Columbia Heights. Instead, it will just operate from Paul's site in White Bear Lake. This could potentially limit coverage, and leave out operators in the west and south-west. The bigger problem, in Paul's mind, is that there isn't enough interest in VHF DMR to justify a digital-only option. 

So why not weigh in the issue? Let K0LAV (Paul) know if you have interest in VHF DMR. You can find him on the 146.850, the 444.800, or you can find his email address on his QRZ page. It's unusual for repeater owners to solicit input from the community, though I wish it was done more often.
 
To me, it seems that there are already plenty of voice two-metre repeaters in the metro -- perhaps too many for the finite number of hams -- with excellent coverage options and features (cross-band linking, EchoLink, WIRES, IRLP). I'm sceptical that a hybrid repeater would draw significant numbers of analogue users on VHF to a new repeater. The TCFMC's hybrid "dot one" is almost all analogue users, because their user base was established on analogue. It wasn't a case of new people streaming in to talk to C4FM operators. 

  For a lot of operators, one of the more compelling reasons to move to digital is the ability to insulate yourself from the "common hams". Elitism is rampant in the hobby, to the point where long-time hams have been immersed in it for so long that they no longer notice it, as one does not notice the air that they breathe. Making the 147.390+ (98.5 PL) repeater a dual-mode affair would undermine the elitist appeal of a DMR repeater. The majority of digital repeaters are on UHF, which so many hams spurn outright on the basis of some mysterious principle that I fail to grasp. This repeater would be on two metres, which is what serious people use. And it would use DMR, which is what serious professional and commercial operators use. 

We just hit the trifecta here. 

There are, of course, other reasons to embrace digital FM modes. There is no noise, your narrow-band signal can be heard by repeaters further away, and you have access to the entire world through internet-connected Talk Groups. Battery life also improves. 

There are the usual Motorola and Hytera radio options, and they are expensive but well-made. Connect Systems in CA makes a VHF HT (the CS701). Connect Systems gives hams a steep discount, and you can get the CS701 for $180 (excluding cable, speaker mic, and shipping). The order form is here. You don't have to fill out the credit card information, as they will call you when everything is ready. There are Chinese knock-offs of Motorola mobiles out there, too. 

Last, but not least, on the list of reasons for the 147.390 to go digital-only would be that it could link to the only other DMR repeater in the State -- the UHF 442.425 machine in St. Paul. It would be nothing more complex than having a MN Talk Group, and VHF operators could just as easily isolate themselves from the UHF operators if they wished. But there is no good reason in my mind to duplicate the UHF/VHF gulf on DMR that we already find on analogue in the metro. The HandiHam network is the only cross-band repeater option, and others seem to have deliberately avoided following this example -- even though there are UHF slots still available. 

DMR offers Minnesota a chance for a fresh start, free of the distinctions of decades past that are no longer relevant moving forward. In contrast to most of our neighbours, who have state-wide linked repeater networks, digital could finally be the state-wide solution that we've studiously avoided for so long.