Unique Repeater Setups

[quarterwave]

Since I often see posts from people thinking out loud, or whom just got a license and got into radio, proposing to do some brand-new wild and crazy idea that will shock the world..... 

There is little new and shocking about how and what we can do with radio, both in HAM and GMRS. It's all been tried in one way or another. Now, that's not discouragement, but so many wild ideas get a critical response when the wild eyed newbies and inexperienced folks get to thinking with a keyboard.

How about we proactively talk about unique setups or experiments we may done or seen.

This way when Cleetus wants to link 17 repeaters in 4 square miles with MURS and CB channels, maybe he won't get run over by the radio police. He'll know that's not right, and won't work, at least within the rules. 

So if you have multiple repeaters, remote receivers, wireline controls, RF linked repeaters, poor mans LTR (AKA - PL scanning) or some other unique setup, we'd love to hear about it, how it is setup and if it works well. 

[Guest]

Yes all. He would looove to hear about all the illegal stuff every one does.  He would love you to speak of all the things that may (if the fcc ever does anything) get you in trouble with the fccs police.  He would also like you to tell all of us about all the things that will make sad ham heads explode and threaten to turn you in for.   
 

this thread is going to be great. 

[quarterwave]

The sarcasm is strong with this one. 

There is probably alot of sideways stuff going on out there, but there are perfectly legit setups too. 

I've worked in commercial telecom and part 90 for over 30 years, sometimes the most unique solutions seem out of bounds, then all the haters have to peel their foot out of their mouths when they can't prove it is.

I figure a collection of interesting experiments or setups to read about is way better than 9,000 random posts by newbies with the big new idea of the day. 

[DONE]

OK, first, multiple PL, which is a 'community repeater' isn't illegal.  It has been done in the past and no doubt will continue to be done.  Kenwood repeaters are the way to go here as the Motorola stuff requires a secondary repeater controller.

Benefits to multi-PL is you can have a repeater that is both public (PL #1) and private (PL #2) and be right with the world.  You can communicate via your private PL to your short list of users, and have the repeater open to all users without disturbing you.

Now, stuff I am doing.  Of course we know that hardline is expensive.  Antenna's are too (at least good commercial stuff).  I happened into an 8 port transmit combiner that I converted to two 4 port combiners and then added a hybrid combiner port to it in order to run 2 GMRS repeaters (600 and 675) on the same antenna.  This consisted of two dual isolators, a 50/50 power divider and the existing can in the combiner.  The two repeaters are feeding the two dual isolators, which feed into the power divider (working backwards) and then into the can that feeds the spider going tothe transmit antenna.  That combiner also has a ham repeater at 442.775 feeding it.  the other combiner only has a single GMRS repeater that belongs to the site owner.  There is discussion for additional UHF repeaters to be put at the site for other hams to take advantage of the combiner and antenna heights.  Of course, free or even reasonably priced tower access for a ham / gmrs repeater is a rare thing indeed.

Other 'odd' things that I am doing. 

My repeaters are all 24 volt DC powered.  MTR2000 /3000's are great repeaters, but they share one failure point.  The power supplies in them tend to fail when running them from 110/220.  But the 24 volt power input still works fine in most cases of a supply failure. So I am running a stack of 48 volt to 24 volt buck converters in parallel (old telco gear) that are 40 amps each on the 24 volt output.   With 5 of these in parallel, I have a sizable supply of 24 volt power.

Of course running those does require 48 volts.  That is derived from an ElTek rectifier that has 6 30 amp modules in it and charge and maintain 6 strings 110amp hour batteries.  The 48 volt also runs other microwave equipment and ethernet switches at the site.  Last time I ran the calculations for expected battery capacity based on the load at the time I was at 4 days.   So that's a bit outside the norm.  Not too far, but not typical.

 

I would have to think on the other 'non-typical' things I am doing with the current setup.  While I know how to and have the ability to run receive sites on my setup, I somehow accidentally setup the receive and transmit antenna's in such a way that my coverage both directions is equal on both portable and mobile subscribers.  If you can hear it it will hear you.  So receive sites would actually break that equal coverage thing I have going on. 

Now my control station setup is a bit different that most.  I am running a Motorola MotoBridge system that locates the radios and the gateways at the tower and the 'consoles' at my house via a microwave link to the tower.  I have 2 gateways in active use and 3 more to install and expand the system as needed.  The MotoBridge will allow for direct control of APX/XTL and XPR radios.  In addition I can do tone remote (have a VHF and UHF MTR setup for tone configured as base stations) local control for basic PTT and audio and they will interface to several other radio types that are no longer around. 

I was doing this with a Centracom console system but that was becomeing difficult to deal with and I backed away from that for the time being.

 

 

 

[Raybestos]

22 hours ago, WRXP381 said:

Yes all. He would looove to hear about all the illegal stuff every one does.  He would love you to speak of all the things that may (if the fcc ever does anything) get you in trouble with the fccs police.  He would also like you to tell all of us about all the things that will make sad ham heads explode and threaten to turn you in for.   
 

this thread is going to be great. 

Would this include the time when I was twelve, and I swiped a bottle of my sister's hand lotion and later that day, touched myself in an impure manner?