The great "walkie-talkie" wars .... who will win?

Thomas M. Goethe wrote:
> I suspect I will have the same problem. I found the delay when going
> from a simplex system to a repeater system slightly annoying and the delay
> when going from a one channel repeater system to a Motorola trunked even
> more annoying.

When we started offering shared UHF repeaters to replace the aging VHF
simple, users were stacked in the driveway to upgrade their mobiles.
Never noticed any delay when talking through a repeater. The greatest
annoyance was using the Motorola trunked system and having to wait for
the beeps before you could start talking.

>
> It was far too time consuming to set up when you were trying to
> alert the folks on the other side of the fire scene that the wind was about
> to blow their way.

We still use a dozen Motorola VHF HT-220 for our volunteer fire dept.
The 8" antenna makes for a good handle when you use them to break
through a glass window.

>>I don't hate digital cellular.

I miss the old IMTS mobiles. Signal was so clear it was impossible for
someone to tell you were mobile. So clean you could sent DTMF. But...
with only forty or so non-compatible channels in the Dallas and Fort
worth area, it was a technolgy that was soon to expire.

---

› See More: The great "walkie-talkie" wars .... who will win?

"JRW" <no_addy@no_.com> wrote in message
news:4K_kb.660$a%[email protected]...
>
> We still use a dozen Motorola VHF HT-220 for our volunteer fire dept.
> The 8" antenna makes for a good handle when you use them to break
> through a glass window.
>

We carried those for years. GREAT radio and excellent bludgeon :-)


--
Thomas M. Goethe

On Tue, 21 Oct 2003 00:04:16 GMT, JRW <no_addy@no_.com> wrote:

>Thomas M. Goethe wrote:
>> I suspect I will have the same problem. I found the delay when going
>> from a simplex system to a repeater system slightly annoying and the delay
>> when going from a one channel repeater system to a Motorola trunked even
>> more annoying.
>
>When we started offering shared UHF repeaters to replace the aging VHF
>simple, users were stacked in the driveway to upgrade their mobiles.
>Never noticed any delay when talking through a repeater. The greatest
>annoyance was using the Motorola trunked system and having to wait for
>the beeps before you could start talking.
>
There's no delay in an FM repeater system. I was just on a repeater
system on 2 meter FM that consists of 12 repeaters across Eastern SC
from NC to GA inland to Columbia. There's a massive net on it every
night. Tonight was our Skywarn net run by the National Weather
Service ham station, WX4CHS. Just like PTT only one person can talk
at once.....but there's ZERO delay as it's all analog with UHF radio
links between far spaced repeaters.
>>
>> It was far too time consuming to set up when you were trying to
>> alert the folks on the other side of the fire scene that the wind was about
>> to blow their way.
>
>We still use a dozen Motorola VHF HT-220 for our volunteer fire dept.
>The 8" antenna makes for a good handle when you use them to break
>through a glass window.

I've watched an HT-220 fall from 1800' up a TV tower, bounce about
250' into the air right after the battery separated and went a
different way. It took some hunting to find the battery pack, but
when it was plugged into the HT-220, it functioned flawlessly. Would
you expect anything less from REAL Motorola equipment?....(c;
>
>>>I don't hate digital cellular.
>
>I miss the old IMTS mobiles. Signal was so clear it was impossible for
>someone to tell you were mobile. So clean you could sent DTMF. But...
>with only forty or so non-compatible channels in the Dallas and Fort
>worth area, it was a technolgy that was soon to expire.
>
I think it would be fun to put up a 4-channel IMTS system. The
licenses are all expired and the channels ARE open. 152Mhz works
better with more range. I even know someone who's spent his live in
2-way and paging who would know where warehouses of IMTS equipment is
stored.....(c;



Larry W4CSC

3600 planes with transponders are burning 8-10 million
gallons of kerosene per hour over the USA. R-12 car air
conditioners are responsible for the ozone hole, right?

Larry W4CSC wrote:

> On Tue, 21 Oct 2003 00:04:16 GMT, JRW <no_addy@no_.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Thomas M. Goethe wrote:
> There's no delay in an FM repeater system.

I agree. I don't know why that other poster said there was.

>>We still use a dozen Motorola VHF HT-220 for our volunteer fire dept.
>>The 8" antenna makes for a good handle when you use them to break
>>through a glass window.
>
>
> I've watched an HT-220 fall from 1800' up a TV tower, bounce about
> 250' into the air right after the battery separated and went a
> different way. It took some hunting to find the battery pack, but
> when it was plugged into the HT-220, it functioned flawlessly. Would
> you expect anything less from REAL Motorola equipment?....(c;

Ok, you beat me...longest drop I have had on a radio was only
1,200 feet.

>>>>I don't hate digital cellular.
>>
>>I miss the old IMTS mobiles. Signal was so clear it was impossible for
>>someone to tell you were mobile. So clean you could sent DTMF. But...
>>with only forty or so non-compatible channels in the Dallas and Fort
>>worth area, it was a technolgy that was soon to expire.
>>
>
> I think it would be fun to put up a 4-channel IMTS system. The
> licenses are all expired and the channels ARE open. 152Mhz works
> better with more range. I even know someone who's spent his live in
> 2-way and paging who would know where warehouses of IMTS equipment is
> stored.....(c;
>
> Larry W4CSC

I haven't listened to any old telco or comman carrier channels
for years, but I suspect that many were converted over to paging.

On Mon, 20 Oct 2003 23:14:38 GMT, Name withheld by request
<[email protected]> wrote:

>Ham here too, only since 1990 KB0GNK
>I do agree with you about the poor front ends in most amateur
>equipment because of what you state, that most hams also want
>their xcvrs to work as "scanners". This one paging company
>that I'm referring to, is known to "tweak" their deviation though.
>They've been popped by the FCC a few times. Less than a mile
>from their main tower is a broadcast FM studio for a local university.
>The chief engineer there is a stickler for a good clean quality
>signal. So much so, that anytime I'm in the market for an FM
>receiver, speakers etc, I use his station as a test. (PBS station).
>He has probably the cleanest FM signal in town.

Running on public funds, he probably has broadcast's biggest budget,
too!...(c; I've worked for stations where the owner would be mad as
hell if you bought a new 833A final amp tube that would still light
up. He wasn't concerned that there wasn't any plate current...(c;
Buying a PAIR of 833As for the modulator would send him into orbit
unless he was staring at an FCC citation for the old tube's
distortion.
>
>Most hams around our area, can really cut the front end noise by
>using a single band antenna now, because all of our public service
>agencies have quit using VHF and UHF and have gone to 800 mhz
>trunked radio.
>

Look around local radio shops for the light beige DB Products
low-split VHF cavities. Put two slugs in them and pass the signal
through it. If you ground the can, the radio isn't even hooked to the
antenna for the thunderstorms. My packet node was the ONLY piece of
equipment that survived a direct hit that took out the whole
candelabra, all the paging system, the tower lighting equipment, a
6-cylinder Onan diesel power plant and all its equipment and melted
the power company lines to the pole! We figured the Alinco DR-110,
little ham linear and MFJ TNC survived because they were running off a
deepcycle boat battery with a cheap charger and none of it was
actually hooked to ground just sitting in a metal cabinet that was
sitting on the deck in the paging building. Hell, when the duty tech
opened the door to the smoke filled building, he shook his head
because he could still hear packets being received and the little
transmitter clicking forwarding them through the pieces of hard line
up the tower! The packet was still on the air until the battery went
dead 3 DAYS LATER!...(c;



Larry W4CSC

3600 planes with transponders are burning 8-10 million
gallons of kerosene per hour over the USA. R-12 car air
conditioners are responsible for the ozone hole, right?

Larry W4CSC wrote:
> I've watched an HT-220 fall from 1800' up a TV tower, bounce about
> 250' into the air right after the battery separated and went a
> different way. It took some hunting to find the battery pack, but
> when it was plugged into the HT-220, it functioned flawlessly. Would
> you expect anything less from REAL Motorola equipment?....(c;

I'm surprised the battery pack popped off.

"Larry W4CSC" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Tue, 21 Oct 2003 00:04:16 GMT, JRW <no_addy@no_.com> wrote:

> There's no delay in an FM repeater system.

There was on ours and on most, if not all of the public safety systems I
used to monitor. Only .25 to .5 seconds, but not as quick as a simplex
system. Most of these were going through satellite receivers with voters, so
that probably contributed.


--
Thomas M. Goethe

JRW wrote:

> I miss the old IMTS mobiles. Signal was so clear it was impossible for
> someone to tell you were mobile. So clean you could sent DTMF. But...
> with only forty or so non-compatible channels in the Dallas and Fort
> worth area, it was a technolgy that was soon to expire.
>

TLD-1100 trunk unit w/20 watt tube transmitter, push-button FACS control
head w/digital channel readout & electronic ringer, standard corded
handset. The beige one was VHF 5-channel roamer and the black one was
UHF 12-channel local only. Yeah, I had helper springs on that Mercury,
but dial tone was sweet music.


--
jer email reply - I am not a 'ten' ICQ = 35253273
"All that we do is touched with ocean, yet we remain on the shore of
what we know." -- Richard Wilbur

On Mon, 20 Oct 2003 22:36:59 -0400, "Thomas M. Goethe"
<[email protected]> wrote:

>"Larry W4CSC" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>news:[email protected]...
>> On Tue, 21 Oct 2003 00:04:16 GMT, JRW <no_addy@no_.com> wrote:
>
>> There's no delay in an FM repeater system.
>
> There was on ours and on most, if not all of the public safety systems I
>used to monitor. Only .25 to .5 seconds, but not as quick as a simplex
>system. Most of these were going through satellite receivers with voters, so
>that probably contributed.
>
>
Those are trunked radio systems, setup so many different users can
share common equipment......like Nextel has.

There's a setup and switch time because they all frequency hop around
to vacant channels on each transmission.....making the cops hard to
follow on a regular scanner.....



Larry W4CSC

3600 planes with transponders are burning 8-10 million
gallons of kerosene per hour over the USA. R-12 car air
conditioners are responsible for the ozone hole, right?

On Tue, 21 Oct 2003 06:27:05 -0500, Jer <[email protected]> wrote:

>JRW wrote:
>
>> I miss the old IMTS mobiles. Signal was so clear it was impossible for
>> someone to tell you were mobile. So clean you could sent DTMF. But...
>> with only forty or so non-compatible channels in the Dallas and Fort
>> worth area, it was a technolgy that was soon to expire.
>>
>
>TLD-1100 trunk unit w/20 watt tube transmitter, push-button FACS control
>head w/digital channel readout & electronic ringer, standard corded
>handset. The beige one was VHF 5-channel roamer and the black one was
>UHF 12-channel local only. Yeah, I had helper springs on that Mercury,
>but dial tone was sweet music.
>
Remember sneaking into a store and standing in line worrying over
whether there would be enough battery left to crank it when the line
stalled in the store?....(c;

Happiness is a running dynamotor.....



Larry W4CSC

3600 planes with transponders are burning 8-10 million
gallons of kerosene per hour over the USA. R-12 car air
conditioners are responsible for the ozone hole, right?

Larry W4CSC wrote:
> Remember sneaking into a store and standing in line worrying over
> whether there would be enough battery left to crank it when the line
> stalled in the store?....(c;

No, but i did make the mistake of leaving both of my trunk mounted
units (with that vacuum tube in the final), my solid state Micor,
and truck stereo running for a few hours while working on a tower
eight miles from a dirt farm road.

Was able to break off the lock of the propane Onan. Of course, I
didn't have any jumper cables - So I took the battery out of my
truck, and connected to the Onan with some RG-8 coax to charge it.

Back in high school, my old "Twin-V" VHF would dim the lights on
my Karmin Gia (sporty body Volkswagon) when transmitting.

Larry W4CSC wrote:

> On Tue, 21 Oct 2003 06:27:05 -0500, Jer <[email protected]> wrote:

>>TLD-1100 trunk unit w/20 watt tube transmitter, push-button FACS control
>>head w/digital channel readout & electronic ringer, standard corded
>>handset. The beige one was VHF 5-channel roamer and the black one was
>>UHF 12-channel local only. Yeah, I had helper springs on that Mercury,
>>but dial tone was sweet music.
>>
>
> Remember sneaking into a store and standing in line worrying over
> whether there would be enough battery left to crank it when the line
> stalled in the store?....(c;
>
> Happiness is a running dynamotor.....


The only time I get stranded was when I left the car at a service shop.
They couldn't start it when they wanted to and jumped it. Jumped it
again when I went back to pick it up. And they complained about it
ringing a lot, but were afraid to touch it. After that, I had it
rewired so the finals were only hot when the ignition was on. Oh, and I
had to replace the alternator several times as well.

And here's the cool part. For a while I also had a 2-ch Moto PT-400 on
RCC. One extended road trip I had to use a rental and took it with me,
along with a VHF 2M rig w/140w amp and a vertical co-phased whip on a
trunk-lip mount. Flat tire just north of the Red River, jack was
jammed. I couldn't raise any RCC with the native 10w on the 400, so I
re-routed the coax to the VHF whip. Still no joy. So I added the amp
and Dallas RCC was crystal, and they billed for the six LD calls to find
a tow truck. Oh, and if the FCC is reading this, I only did it once.

--
jer email reply - I am not a 'ten' ICQ = 35253273
"All that we do is touched with ocean, yet we remain on the shore of
what we know." -- Richard Wilbur

"Larry W4CSC" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Mon, 20 Oct 2003 22:36:59 -0400, "Thomas M. Goethe"

> > There was on ours and on most, if not all of the public safety
systems I
> >used to monitor. Only .25 to .5 seconds, but not as quick as a simplex
> >system. Most of these were going through satellite receivers with voters,
so
> >that probably contributed.
> >
> >
> Those are trunked radio systems, setup so many different users can
> share common equipment......like Nextel has.

Not the ones I was using that I referred to. All of them ran at 452.975
out and 457.975 in as I recall.

The first repeater system we had used one repeater and no satellites
receivers. It had the fastest response time. Almost, but not quite instant
when pressing the PTT.

The second had one repeater, three satellite receivers, one voter. It
was wired together with telco circuits. This one had maybe a quarter second
lag.

The last setup we used had three repeaters simulcasting on 452.975. I
seem to recall that that were two voters polling into a master someplace
that attempted to keep everything in sync. There were quite a few
satellites. We were trying to cover five counties (which in FL can be big)
with five watt portables. Yes, five watt, the MX-330's came in five watts
uhf and six in vhf. We had Convertacoms in the cars with 60 watt Henry amps.
The last system never worked right, largely due to the fact we were trying
to run it over phone lines. It we could have gotten a license for some
microwave links, they might have been able to control some of the
heterodyning (sp?) that we were getting. Just like Santa, the FM capture
effect can not be relied on.

The lag of this one was less than a half second, but since all of it
didn't always key up, it sometimes didn't matter.

It was one of the most ambitious non-state or Federal system Motorola
tried to do in these parts and they never got it to work. The final proposal
to make it work (which was put together by engineers rather than salesmen)
involved about four more repeaters and satellite links for everything thing.

And no, we did not share this system with anyone else, it was strictly
ours.


--
Thomas M. Goethe


--
Thomas M. Goethe

On Tue, 21 Oct 2003 23:42:35 GMT, JRW <no_addy@no_.com> wrote:

>
>Back in high school, my old "Twin-V" VHF would dim the lights on
>my Karmin Gia (sporty body Volkswagon) when transmitting.
>
Right after I made ETN2 (2nd class petty officer) USN, I tossed
caution to the wind and bought a new VW Campmobile, the German factory
model, from a local VW dealer. Looking back, I got screwed because I
had no idea how to bargain price at the time....just a kid.

It was the VW bus with the split windshield, 1966 with the pop-top
camper. I later got a more modern one after a couple years without my
beloved camper because I missed it so much.

The storage compartment under the fold-down rear seat that made the
bed JUST FIT a full-sized GM bus battery (probably a D-8 but not sure)
that was like 650AH. A hole in the firewall into the engine
compartment to parallel it with the little VW battery with welding
cables. I no longer needed power to go camping....(c;

The VW's little generator (no alternators them days) never dropped off
its full load output of something like 20-25A for years......

IMTS wouldn't have run it down, either.....(c;



Larry W4CSC

3600 planes with transponders are burning 8-10 million
gallons of kerosene per hour over the USA. R-12 car air
conditioners are responsible for the ozone hole, right?

Jer wrote:
> I couldn't raise any RCC with the native 10w on the 400, so I
> re-routed the coax to the VHF whip. Still no joy. So I added the amp
> and Dallas RCC was crystal, and they billed for the six LD calls to find
> a tow truck. Oh, and if the FCC is reading this, I only did it once.

Now that was certainly quick thinking! Texas RCCs usually ran near the
top of 1,000 towers and had execellent range, not like Denton GTE that
ran two IMTS VHF channels on a 50' stick.

I was at a very remote telco MTS site and had to call back to toll-test
board and ended up plugging my mobile into the feed line at the bottom
of a 400' tower on a 500' hilltop. Mobile operators from all across the
state were answering me.