Loose Notes 718/15

  I haven't been on the air much over the past week. And, when I have, there hasn't seemed to be very many other people on. Those are the nights when I spend my time on APRS, where a "contact" is assured. Still, I have had a few conversations so far this weekend, and gleaned a few bits of information. 

• The Maple Grove Radio Club (MGRC) has given up on its UHF .700 repeater near Elm Creek Park. It never worked very well. I'm about seven miles away, and I could barely raise it. The MGRC has replaced the repeater and got it co-ordinated to 443.550+ (114.8 PL) at the same location. It's very slightly better, but there's a good chance it will be improved. Now that the TCFMC's "dot one" has moved further south, and the C4FM 444.450+ has moved further north, there's a gap in UHF coverage here in Plymouth. 

• Per N0FWG (Jerry), the MGRC is also considering adding a remote receive site in Robbinsdale for their VHF 147.000+ (no tone) repeater in Maple Plain. It would be the same site as the 444.775+ operates out of (and the K0YTH-13 digipeater). I'm thinking this would expand the useful range of their 2M repeater to HT coverage in Uptown, Columbia Heights, NE Minneapolis, and maybe into the challenging environment of downtown Minneapolis. If you can reach the UHF .775 now, you should be able to get in to the big western VHF repeater...if this actually happens. 

• Rumours are also swirling regarding the addition of a 1.25M repeater to the Bakken Radio Club's (Medtronic) array of repeaters. This is just sheer speculation on my part, but the 224.940- (100.0 PL) has been looking for a new home for years now, and this addition might involve that machine. The local 1.25M coverage is currently very "north-centric", and this addition wouldn't change that. The restoration of the TCRC's 224.540- machine will probably not happen for years (if ever), so we're probably locked in to this kind of coverage map for the foreseeable future. Still, if this new addition to K9EQ's line-up were to be cross-band, it would be a potential game-changer for the band.

• Speaking of 1.25M cross-band, there's an FM simplex link on 223.540 (using 114.8 PL) to the UHF C4FM 444.450+ (114.8 PL) repeater in Dayton. The link seems to be located in the south-west metro, but I can reach it easily from here in Plymouth. Considering the absence of traffic on 1.25M FM simplex, I can't imagine this inconveniencing anyone -- especially since nobody uses PL tones on FM simplex. It's actually easier for me to use this cross-band link to get in to the UHF .450 than it is for me to make the 18-mile trip to Dayton directly. 

• The MARA UHF 444.800+ (114.8 PL) repeater came back on the air last weekend, and it seems to be holding up just fine after its two week absence. No idea what the issue was, but I sure missed it when it was down.

• After a bit of quibbling over whether it was actually down, WINET has concluded that the 442.075+ (110.9 PL) really is not "on-air" -- though their web page still lists it as operational. Thanks go out to N0HOY (Dean) and KA0KMJ (John) for contacting the responsible parties. Those that need to reach the Wisconsin linked network should try the Rice Lake 442.100+ (110.9 PL) machine or use EchoLink (node 18006). No idea what is wrong with the Arden Hills repeater, or when it will be fixed (if ever).

• Speaking of N0HOY (Dean), I notice that his N0HOY-10 digipeater is back on-line at the Arden Hills site. He's also set up an APRS object for the (currently down) 442.075+ repeater. I wish that more repeaters would do this. It's not particularly difficult to do, and it doesn't need to involve any RF transmission. 

• Over the past month or so, I've noticed that the Columbia Heights 444.550+ (114.8) repeater has become hard to reach. Last night, N0KFB (Dan) confirmed my suspicions and told me that the UHF machine has been having receiver sensitivity problems. Yet another usually-solid UHF machine in the metro is struggling.     

Loose Notes 12/13/14

A few scattered observations this weekend:

• A tip of the hat to KA0KMJ (John), an MGRC member, for letting me know that their Maple Plain 147.000+ (no PL) repeater actually has tone squelch implemented. Now I don't have to hear all of the intermod when I go into Minneapolis and want to use the Maple Plain machine. John further explained that the decision to go without an input PL tone was made to accommodate operators in the area with old two-metre rigs that can't "do" CTCSS. Also, per John, the Robbinsdale UHF 444.775+ (114.8 PL) is sponsored by the MGRC (though the listing says otherwise), and the marginal 443.700+ machine in Maple Grove is not the Club's only foray into UHF.

•  I had a brief chat on that same 147.000+ repeater this afternoon with a mobile ham (callsign mangled). He was heading down to Texas, and had a 5W Yaesu HT and a mag-mount antenna on the van. I found it ironic that he told me that he couldn't get into the Maple Plain machine from his home in Howard Lake, but that he was reaching the repeater from near Northfield while mobile talking to me. The 147.000 seems to have really good "ears". I also had a long conversation with WA0ZDE (Rick) shortly after that using my 9W Leixen with an indoor mag-mount antenna on the opposite side of the building from Maple Plain. I've always liked the 147.000, though activity is definitely low.

•  KE0NA (Dave) is working on The Aggrandizer 223.900- (100.0 PL) repeater today, adding a receive pre-amp. The repeater transmits with okay coverage out to Plymouth, but doesn't hear people trying to get into it well enough for mobile use yet. Give the upgraded machine a try.  

• I had a long chat with N0GOI (Terry) last night on the 444.050+ (114.8 PL) machine. Work is nearly complete on the VHF and UHF repeaters in Foreston, and they are both on the air. Terry always has some exciting plans, and it's interesting to talk to him. The two Foreston machines will be linked (cross-band), but this link will have the ability to be disabled for SkyWarn -- with the UHF machine handling the normal local traffic. UHF is a "tough sell" in the rural areas, but cross-band operation will allow those willing to try it out the chance to still keep in contact with the VHF users. There are also some potential plans to implement the Raspberry Pi RF link boards that N0YNT (Matt) and N0BFG (Ryan) are currently experimenting with. That's "down the road", of course, and the controllers still need to be upgraded or modified to work with the linking scheme. 

• Terry also told me that the UHF 443.575+ (114.8 PL) repeater in NE Minneapolis -- operated by KD0WIL (Eric) -- has been upgraded to a 60W MSF-5000. It took 15W to "ker-chunk" the .575 from here in Plymouth, but it came back with an S7 signal once I got in. This is a repeater operating out of Eric's house in Northeast, so reaching Plymouth is pretty good. At some point, I understand that it will be linked into the MAGIC system to boost their eastern UHF coverage. Eric is also trying to implement EchoLink on the repeater, but no word on what his near-term objective is for a link. 

•  It turns out the 224.500- (114.8 PL) repeater just needed a re-tuning of the duplexer to get into working shape, per N0FKM (Dan). The machine isn't up to Dan's standards yet, but once it is, he'll be exploring cross-band links to at least one of his other (five) repeaters.

• With the ten-metre contest going this weekend, I tried the webSDR receiver in Louisiana for a listen on the 'action'. Though this receiver is primarily for the propagation beacon sub-band, I was quite surprised to find a whole lot of phone activity in the lower section of the band reserved for CW and digital modes. I heard nothing but American phone stations over the course of an hour in this sub-band -- at least the part covered by the webSDR receiver. Wow, that's some HF "elite" we have. Can't even follow the band plan. Any phone contacts made below 28.300 on the band should be disqualified for the purposes of the contest. Why would anyone even try digital modes with these bozos stomping all over the sub-band? I guess that contesters really are better operators than the rest of us.
   

Maple Grove Repeater Club fumbles with UHF

This past week, I heard about a new UHF repeater going on-air in the NW suburbs. That's great, because there aren't many UHF repeaters out this way in Plymouth. Mostly I'm using those in Minneapolis and working the edges of their coverage. There's the TCFMC's 444.100, the 444.375 in Plymouth, and the relatively new 444.725 hybrid In Osseo. That's it. 

You may think that's a lot, but the .375 is (as N0FWG put it) "under-utilised". I'm somewhat less than welcome on the "dot one" due to unflattering (but true) posts on the TCFMC, and it's fair to say that I'm not missing out on much there anyway beyond the morning roundtable. I'm still experimenting with various indoor antenna solutions that will let me reach the .725 from my study, but I can reach it quite well with an exterior antenna. Still, it's a new repeater that doesn't have community built up around it yet. 

And so I was excited about the MGRC's venture into UHF. In past conversations with President WD9IGX (Tim), I had noted a complete disinterest in UHF as far as the Club went. I don't think that Tim even owns a UHF-capable rig. Nothing wrong with that, of course. And a few of the prominent Club members actually operate UHF repeaters: N0FWG (Jerry) runs the Plymouth 444.375, N0ZRD (Gordy) runs the Robbinsdale 444.775, and KA0KMJ (John) has three machines on the air (443.000, 444.425, and 444.725). Conversations with these three, however, also left me with the distinct impression that the MGRC had priorities other than a UHF repeater for the area, and that "cross-band" was a dirty word in that crowd.

Learning that the new repeater was operated out of a Maple Grove hospital on 443.700+ (186.2 PL), I programmed it in to my FT-897D for a test that I believed would involve an awesome UHF machine put up by experts on the band. 

Imagine, then, my disbelief when this new repeater came back with a (noisy) S3 signal when I threw out my sign. The thing is seven miles from me, and it sounds like a "hobby" repeater in Wisconsin! An HT connected to an antenna on your roof could do as well working simplex. No one was on it, so I couldn't get a signal report. Yeah, it was disappointing. 

Then this morning, thinking that I had maybe judged it harshly when it was so new, I threw out my sign on the frequency again using a three-element Yagi aimed to the north-west with ten watts. It didn't come back at all. It was already "off-air". 

As K0LAV (Paul) informed me, 443.700+ is one of the SNP pairs on the UHF band. It's much easier to get permission to operate a repeater on an SNP pair, but you don't get exclusive use of the frequency. Generally, SNP pairs are used to test repeaters before they move on to a fully-co-ordinated pair. Maybe this is as good as we can expect, though. Sure, it could cover a stretch of I-94 from 169 up to (maybe) Rogers, and it could cover Elm Creek Park. If it were linked to the .375, I could maybe see some kind of practical use for such a low-coverage machine. But, as we all know, linking is "cheating" in some incomprehensible way. 

I could see a more compelling case for a GMRS repeater that would try to cover some of the nearby parks, than I could imagine a rationale for a 70cm repeater that struggles to reach Plymouth.

Activity draws activity...

This is just another example of how a "dead" repeater is actually lively, once the spark has been applied.

Here it is, Saturday afternoon, and I hear a voice on my BaoFeng HT. It's WD9IGX (Tim) throwing out his sign. Now, mostly this reminds me that I forgot to turn the HT off earlier. I was doing something else, and I wasn't really ready to go on the air.

But it's Tim. I've talked to him before, heard him on the HandiHam net, and he's come back to me a few times. He's an easy guy to talk to. So I shut off the HT, walk into the living room and fire up my Yaesu and roll it on down to 147.000, where WD9IGX is about to give up. I return his sign, and we start to chat. I tell him about the post that I was writing about the 147.030, and the 442.600, and how the records are so scant on a lot of machines. We start talking about repeaters, and coverage, and stuff like that, and Tim suggests a pause to see if anyone else wants to break in. Sure enough, N0FWG (Jerry) is there. You might recall that I had a chat with him last summer. He runs the UHF .375 in Plymouth, and is the President of the MN Repeater Council. It turns out he's also in the Maple Grove Radio Club (MGRC), which Tim is President of. And I find out that N0ZRD, who runs the UHF .775, is also in the MGRC.

So it's us three talking on a "dead" repeater, and a fourth jumps in. It's KD0NGS (Linda), the new Vice-President of the MGRC. I get invited to the next meeting of the Club, which is in three days, and the conversation winds down.

I'm not sure what the dynamics are behind the inertia of starting a conversation. Nobody seems to want to do it, but they are willing to join in once it's started. It's not really hard. You just listen and try to talk about something that the other person is interested in, and throw out a few crumbs of topic threads along the way. It's immensely helpful if you can write down notes about some of the tangents that are covered, so they aren't lost, and you can concentrate on talking rather than remembering scattered bits.

The Maple Plain 147.000 is one of my "hangout" repeaters that I was talking about towards the end of this post. It's a fairly powerful repeater that can cover all of Minneapolis and the western part of St. Paul, as well as its main job of covering the western suburbs. It's pretty much on the edge of what constitutes a "metro area" repeater, which is one of the things that I like about it.

I threw the idea of cross-band capability out there, since so many of the most influential people in the Club were there, but I just got a "non-answer" in return. I can see UHF not being particularly compelling to people in the western rural areas, but that's mostly because they're unfamiliar with it.

If the Plymouth .375 were more powerful, it would a good choice for a link. I've been able to reach the repeater from Lake Harriet just fine, but the downtown skyline might be too big of a challenge for the line-of-sight coverage that UHF needs. Plymouth is high ground, and Jerry has estimated that the antenna for the .375 is around 100 feet up. So, I'd just wildly guess that the area west of downtown from 694 down to 494 is all within easy reach. While that doesn't expand the 147.000's range whatsoever, it could serve as a remote receive site in a way -- and bolster the eastern coverage.

With the association between the MGRC and N0ZRD, the UHF .775 would be an excellent choice for a cross-band link with the 147.000 repeater. The .775 is not used at all, and linking it to the 147.000 would probably not substantially increase the amount of activity on either band -- at least at first. But it would extend the total range of the 147.000 into St. Paul, and would be simple to do.