Repeaters With Multiple PL Tones

[tcp2525]

I've been noticing some repeaters in my area have up to eight different PL tones to get into it. What gives with this? Is there a legitimate reason or is this sloppy programming?

 

 

 

 

[KAF6045]

9 minutes ago, tcp2525 said:

I've been noticing some repeaters in my area have up to eight different PL tones to get into it. What gives with this? Is there a legitimate reason or is this sloppy programming?

In the old days (say, 1997, when repeaters tended to be owned by a business or radio dealer) CTCSS tones would have been assigned to user groups sharing a repeater. Company A gets one tone, company B gets a different tone -- Other than having to ensure a clear channel, this meant the companies did not hear each other's communications.

 

[wayoverthere]

11 minutes ago, tcp2525 said:

I've been noticing some repeaters in my area have up to eight different PL tones to get into it. What gives with this? Is there a legitimate reason or is this sloppy programming?

One possibility is controlling access, and the ability to "boot" someone without affecting others. Another would be if there's different input and output tones, you could segregate traffic without having to hear each other.

[tcp2525]

8 minutes ago, KAF6045 said:

In the old days (say, 1997, when repeaters tended to be owned by a business or radio dealer) CTCSS tones would have been assigned to user groups sharing a repeater. Company A gets one tone, company B gets a different tone -- Other than having to ensure a clear channel, this meant the companies did not hear each other's communications.

 

I  remember those days and thought they were long gone, but it makes sense.

[tcp2525]

8 minutes ago, wayoverthere said:

One possibility is controlling access, and the ability to "boot" someone without affecting others. Another would be if there's different input and output tones, you could segregate traffic without having to hear each other.

Interesting. I  know the repeater I use only uses two, one for the group and 141.3 as a travel tone. I don't think, with modern radios, booting someone via PL would be a useful too as it will be circumvented in minutes. I just find all these available tones strange and not useful.

[wayoverthere]

29 minutes ago, KAF6045 said:

In the old days (say, 1997, when repeaters tended to be owned by a business or radio dealer) CTCSS tones would have been assigned to user groups sharing a repeater. Company A gets one tone, company B gets a different tone -- Other than having to ensure a clear channel, this meant the companies did not hear each other's communications.

 

Honestly, I think there may still be one in my area still doing something similar but digitally. MotoTrbo, with one talkgroup per subscribing business perhaps?

 

18 minutes ago, tcp2525 said:

Interesting. I  know the repeater I use only uses two, one for the group and 141.3 as a travel tone. I don't think, with modern radios, booting someone via PL would be a useful too as it will be circumvented in minutes. I just find all these available tones strange and not useful.

Agreed on not being all that useful with front panel programmable and the availability of tone scanning nowadays. The two tone arrangement is probably just more aimed at a universal access/open repeater initiative kind of mindset.

There's a network here on the ham side that uses separate tones in to dictate if the audio is forwarded to the network of repeaters, or just locally on that machine, and just one tone on the output

 

[WRQC527]

The GMRS repeater I frequent here in SoCal has two different input/output tones, because one is for members, the other is for associates and "affiliate users", (those of us who throw down $12 a year to help keep the lights on).  I'm not exactly sure what that accomplishes, and in reality, if you set your radio with the output tones, you may end up doubling with someone using the other tone because you can't hear them. So I don't use the output tones, and I just use my lowly affiliate user input tone so I can hear everyone. My 2-meter repeater only has one input tone and no output tone.

[KAF6045]

2 hours ago, WRQC527 said:

I'm not exactly sure what that accomplishes, and in reality, if you set your radio with the output tones, you may end up doubling with someone using the other tone because you can't hear them.

A lot of radios have BCLO (busy channel lock-out) capability, which may work in this situation.

[gortex2]

In the past it was referred to community repeater. I still use multiple tones on my repeaters for specific reasons.  One tone is for normal chit chat and another is to call my parents base radio. They dont want to hear all sorts of traffic all hours of the day and just want to hear if myself or a certain person wants them. I did the same in the past for my control station at home. We had a good repeater in a county park that used the travel tone for hikers to use. We used another PL for SAR folks and a third for another user group. 

It basically allows certain users to only hear the user group they want to hear. Yes there is training involved in a community repeater but they are still used in the LMR world.