FCC does not allow More repeaters?

[marcspaz]

10 minutes ago, WRQC527 said:

Yep, and the problem with that is, for example here in Southern California, ham repeater pairs are hard to get. TASMA and SCRRBA coordinate repeaters, and there are already so many that adding new ones is darn near impossible. 

 

Quick question, if there are so many ham repeaters that it's so difficult to add another one, why would you need to? Just use the existing repeater network.

[WRQC527]

49 minutes ago, marcspaz said:

why would you need to?

Personally, I don't see a reason to add new repeaters here. There are so many underused ones here already. But my repeater club wants to add a 440 repeater to our site that we lost when the guy who had the pair we were using got mad and quit letting us use it. Basically we need to wait until an existing pair is available, like if another club or individual wants to give it up. 

[axorlov]

Out of 120 repeater pairs (442-445) can't find single available pair? Wow. I know, there is a very live and dense 70cm scene between LA and San Diego, but still... 120 pairs are available.

Edit: they go by 20KHz bandwidth, so there are 150 pairs available. On SCRRBA website they only list 21 pairs. I'm curious, where all the spectrum went?

[gortex2]

41 minutes ago, axorlov said:

Out of 120 repeater pairs (442-445) can't find single available pair? Wow. I know, there is a very live and dense 70cm scene between LA and San Diego, but still... 120 pairs are available.

Edit: they go by 20KHz bandwidth, so there are 150 pairs available. On SCRRBA website they only list 21 pairs. I'm curious, where all the spectrum went?

I ask this question every day when hams tell me UHF is full. There are a ton of repeater pairs but many are tied to xyz ham who may put up a repeater someday. Thats the issue with the "coordinators" in my opinion. I live in them middle of no where. Have 1 2M repeater within 100 miles and when i asked for my own 2m got told no. 

So I just put up one on my pair. 

 

But I agree. Tons of spectrum in ham bands

[WRQC527]

42 minutes ago, axorlov said:

where all the spectrum went?

All I know is that in Southern California, between Los Angeles, Riverside, Orange, Santa Barbara and San Diego counties, there's well over 400 70cm repeaters. Some have the same frequency pairs. 

[WRUE951]

There are 4 GMRS repeaters (one of them mine) here in the Mojave desert i reside.   Two of these repeaters (not mine) are on a 4500' peak that has awesome line of site in all directions.  I've conversed one those two repeaters 85-90 miles away.  Not Bad...   My repeater has good coverage at 240 degrees and i'v had conversation at 65 miles north...  I keep my repeater open (no pl's) so it seems to get more traffic than the other 3..  I think the key, if you want traffic on your repeater, leave it open..  (no pl's).   

[Lscott]

1 hour ago, WRUE951 said:

 I keep my repeater open (no pl's) so it seems to get more traffic than the other 3..  I think the key, if you want traffic on your repeater, leave it open..  (no pl's).   

Some people seem to have a hard time grasping the idea of a frequency offset between TX and RX and can't get into their local repeater either.

[kmcdonaugh]

23 hours ago, Lscott said:

Some people seem to have a hard time grasping the idea of a frequency offset between TX and RX and can't get into their local repeater either.

In their defense, some companies make it awful to try and program an offset in to the radio, because they won't just call the setting "offset" or "Tx offset".

[Lscott]

2 hours ago, kmcdonaugh said:

In their defense, some companies make it awful to try and program an offset in to the radio, because they won't just call the setting "offset" or "Tx offset".

That's why we get some of the people we see here asking for help. Crap documentation from the manufacture and confusing menu selections in the radios.