My Mission

From: William H. Conaway

Vice President- Technical Operations

To: Repeater Trustees, Owners, and Prospective Owners and Trustees

My mission as Chairman of the Frequency Coordinating Committee is to coordinate fair and legitimate spectrum usage primarily by repeaters and replexers but also other users as needed. The spectrum is getting more crowded, but there is enough to go around if we share. Just because you've had clear channels in the past, doesn't mean that tomorrow that they will be. Spectrum auctions can crowd us out completely.

To do this, I need your cooperation. If you have or want to have a repeater or other use of the spectrum, do a little soul searching and plan around your "real" needs.

E.G.

1. if you want to cover the mythical town of Mistletoe, which is a town of 5000 population and an end to end distance of 2 miles, don't ask for a repeater to cover a radius of 40 miles. There are wide area systems for the long range user.
2. If it's only you and your spouse that will use the machine, do you really (I mean REALLY) need a repeater. You might be as well off with simplex. When you go out of simplex range, there are a number of repeaters that you can use on an itinerant basis without causing the sponsors heartburn. Be sociable, polite and civil and all things are possible. You might even find that they are just like you.
3. Handhelds are nice but, they aren't meant to work the world! Asking for a repeater just so that you can work handheld to handheld across large distances is a little pretentious at least. A handheld is a nice first radio and even useful at other times but thinking that your handheld must key every repeater for 30 miles full quieting isn't intelligent. The repeater that you want to use should be within a reasonable distance like 5 or 10 miles. Just because you can hear it doesn't mean you can work it.
4. Finally I want to stress the use of controlled access to repeaters. I listened today to a repeater for 2 hours as I drove to work and back. There was not one person on that repeater yet it was keyed up at least two dozen times. Each time there was a noise burst and the courtesy beep. I have listened to others and heard paging tones to the point of distraction. Controlled access (CTCSS or other) is in these days of spectrum crowding is going to become more of a necessity than a luxury. Don't tell me about your users that can't do CTCSS, almost every radio built in the last 10 years has had the encode feature. For those that don't, there are small encoders that can be purchased for a mere pittance and installed. I personally run CTCSS in and out on my machines because I don't want to listen to all the garbage that comes in my radio as I drive around. All I hear is the repeater when it comes up.
5. I am out of 2M spectrum and rapidly running out of 70 CM spectrum. If you have a repeater that is not being used more than once a week for a one hour net, consider giving it up and borrowing someone else's for that hour. I'd happily share mine with you. If you have a repeater that is used quite a bit and you know of another that languishes unused, offer the sponsor the use of yours for the occasional chat and suggest he relinquish the frequency for another.

Thank you for your continued support

William H. Conaway W8HNT

VP-Technical Operations, Chairman Frequency Coordinating Committee