Opportunity for ham radio 2 get 2 repeaters donated

Interest Groups
1

My brother in law is offering to donate 2 MSF 5000 motorola repeaters to the hams at Dallas Makerspace.
One is configured for 2 meters, one is 900Mhz.
Both need a little work. (mainly replacing caps on the PLL board) firmware updates also.
These are the first SDR repeaters that motorola ever built as a commercial repeater offering.
I repaired the 2M unit a few years back and it was used to coordinate emergency services when a chemical plant fire in Cleburn took place.
The website http://www.repeater-builder.com/rbtip/index.html has a lot of info on this model (as well as many others)

If you are acquainted with folks in the Plano club, they can attest that the 2M unit worked well because they requested W5BCR turn down the repeater power level to keep from stomping on their repeater.
The folks in Valley Mills, Tx complied of course.

If there is interest in this, get in touch with me to follow up and make arrangements.
If there is no interest, then I will follow up on this with a local ham club or skywarn or raycess.

Thanks
Steve Adams

3

Ok. noted.
I will get in touch with my brother in law to start the wheels turning on this.
Get in touch with me when convenient and we will handle details.

Regards
S.

5

Sure, why not?

If we are wanting to put up a repeater, then we should also put up antennas for 2m and 70cm and connect to the panel in Electronics. We can also consider a 220 repeater. There are repeater pairs available in 6m, 220, 900 and a very few for digital-only (DStar and DMR) 70cm repeaters.

There are “ham” radios available for 220, 6m and 70cm, but no one currently makes “ham” radios for 900MHz. Those are all repurposed commercial radios. Some of them are very easy to reprogram for the 25MHz split and repeater in/out frequencies. Some are hackable - hex editing, modifying or disabling front end filters, etc. Some are more or less impossible - major surgery, adding a PIC or something to intercept signals between the processor and VFO, and worse.

To gauge interest, there are several 900MHz repeaters around the Dallas area. Last time I checked, these were active:

900 Mhz Dallas-Denton Frequency List

Note: Receive is what you set your audio to receive from the repeater. Most repeaters use a 25Mhz split. Double check when programming.

Sort FCC Receive Transmit Tone Location Call Status

01 14 927.1750 902.1750 110.9 Carrollton N5KRG On air

02 02 927.0250 902.0250 D532 Flower Mound N5ERS On air

03 05 927.0625 902.0625 D432 Dallas N4MSE On air

04 03 927.0375 902.0375 110.9 Duncanville KD50B On air

05 33 927.4125 902.4125 D432 Denton N5LS On air

06 49 927.6125 902.6125 110.9 Denton EOC W5NGU On air

07 01 927.0125 902.0125 110.9 Azle WB5IDM On air

08 06 927.0750 902.0750 D432 Farmersville W5GDC On air

Kevin

1 Like
6

I just talked to my brother in law.
He said that he plans to get together with the club’s repeater trustee as soon as that guy is available since he does not have a key to the building. Once he has picked up the equipment, he will drive to Dallas to deliver it.
He purchased a few service manuals and a couple of service accessories, and will be bringing all of that material.
I would like to get phone contact info for any hams who wish to be present when Danny Rymer, (K5FDR)brings this stuff to the space. Send me a PM
I am not saying that it is necessary for folks to be there, but I just figured someone might wish to shake Danny’s hand and say “Thank you” when he delivers this equipment to the space.

If you want to familiarize yourself with this equipment:

Thanks
Steve

7

Well one thing to consider is that this equipment Steve is talking about requires a moderately large rack to house all of the equipment. We ought to get with @artg_dms to decide where/if we have room to house it.

9

Uh oh. What kind of equipment? I own a 900MHz repeater based on a PURC/MSF5000 and it’s an entire full sized enclosed equipment cabinet. That’s really too much for the eLab. I guess a much smaller PA would reduce it to half a rack but that’s still a bunch. If we made it out of a couple of mobiles with a controller and (for 900MHz) a GPS-disciplined reference it would fit in 2-3 RU per repeater. That’s more manageable - and wall mountable.

73,

Kevin Grantham
N5KRG