ICOM will still give you a free repeater if you ask them..
The reason behind the offer is because they can sell more radios by having more repeaters on the air.
Yaesu is still giving away free repeaters - and yes, you should use a external controller. You can buy a Dongle for the repeater for less than $100.00
If you factor in the price of the new free repeater, spending $100 for a controller is a very cheap way of putting up a new repeater.
And, getting the handheld - about $400 and the mobile - about $650 for free is like having someone pay you to play amateur radio.
The problem we are having with the one repeater is either desense or that the repeater is going into oscillations.. It is transmitting in analog and then it is running away in digital. Then again, the owner was in such a big hurry to get it on the air, he doesn't fully understand the manual or the controls yet.
I need to put the cans on the service monitor and check the notch to make sure that the frequency in the duplexers has not shifted.
We had two Motorola Mitrex mobiles before that for repeater radios, one on the air and one as a spare.
I am in the process of putting up a 55' tower for the Diamond X 500 antenna. The elevation at the site is 2400' amsl and the average terrain is only 1400' in town. So it is a lot like having a 1000' tower to begin with.
Presently the Diamond antenna is atop a 40' pipe on the guys back porch.
He is disabled and can't do much on his own, and his pension doesn't cover his expenses.
When lightning struck his old repeater, the repeater council took his coordination away and gave it to another club 50 miles away, just across the state line.. The new repeater in New York is connected to the Wide Area Netwerk so there is a lot of chatter on there, so maybe the desense is being caused by heterodyning. There is no PL on the repeater...
