For the past couple of weeks, I've been floating the idea of the "Community Rig" to basically anyone that will listen, in an effort to get some constructive feedback. A few problems remain that could end up being "deal-breakers", but the potential is there to do something novel in the metro.
The Doer Co-op has two TYT TH-9000D monoband 1.25M transceivers left over from The Aggrandizer (now "The Alincoizer") repeater. In brief, two mobile rigs were used to create a 222 MHz repeater, which is still in operation on 223.900- in NE Minneapolis. For months, we've been wondering what to do with these two rigs. Vague ideas of a remote base or cross-band link have been mentioned, but nobody has the time or interest to make those notions into reality.
In parallel with that, I've noticed that the lack of a rig keeps many local operators from exploring the 1.25M band. There are quite a few operators in town with decades of experience that have never operated on 220, and are unlikely to ever buy a monoband rig to do so. The band remains a mystery to most, though we have some decent repeaters and simplex is wide open.
My idea is to loan out these two transceivers for two months, and pass them around to various operators so that they can explore the local 1.25M scene.
Some say that they'll get ruined, lost, or simply kept. Whatever. We've got our use out of them, and the community is mostly honest people. My biggest concern is that the people who borrow them won't even use them, and they'll sit there for a couple of months in the box until they are passed along.
There are potential problems with logistics, too. Will the rigs be returned to the Co-op, or handed over to the next operator on the list? Setting up meeting times and places to hand off the transceivers could be a major hassle. It's not insurmountable, though.
The big practical issues would be that the person borrowing one of these radios would need to provide their own power supply, antenna, and coaxial cable.
The power supply isn't a big deal; 12A minimum should do it, and most operators have that already. New hams might not, though. I'm really not willing to pass around a power supply for each radio, because it just becomes more stuff that needs to be exchanged every two months.
The antenna is the biggest obstacle. People are highly unlikely to buy an antenna for something that they will only use for two months. It's not hard to make a vertical dipole out of speaker wire, or solder up a 1/4-wave ground-plane from an SO-239 and some rods...but will they actually do that?
I have a 1.25M J-pole that I got on EBay, and I could loan that out. But it's five feet long, making it a bit unwieldy for hand-offs. And it still needs a mounting solution. I'm ordering a 1/4-wave ground-plane antenna, and we'll see how that works out in practise.
The coaxial cable probably isn't a big deal, either. But who knows? Still, a length of cable is just another item to get lost in the shuffle, and it's not something specific to the band like an antenna. People should be able to provide their own coax.
It would be great to give local operators the chance to work with a rig powerful enough to do simplex across town, as well as reach local repeaters.
The first person to try this out will be WW8A (Wayne).
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