Cold Repeaters and Dead Air

 

Any Amateur Radio Operator that spins the VFO anywhere in Canada is going to find that the vast majority of repeaters are unused most of the time.  Yes I am not just talking about obscure bands like 220 and 900, I'm talking about all of them.   In the Greater Vancouver, British Columbia area you tend to find is 1 or 2 busy repeaters and then 100+ with rare to no traffic period.  My travels and connections in this hobby over the decades have assured me that this is the norm and not an exception through out North America and probably the World.

So enter a group of high energy git er done types that set up an Allstar Link hub of local repeaters to activate nodes and bands that are little used.  These rebels take it upon themselves to plant the Ham Radio flag and warm up the air.  The successful activation of this Hub of local repeaters was spectacular, connecting 220, 440, & 900 Mhz repeaters all over the Lower Mainland & Fraser Valley of British Columbia and worked flawlessly.

This small band of miscreant's President of Linking thought what the heck, I've got all these Raspberry Pi's kickin around. I'll use one to make a dedicated Allstar Link Canada Hub where repeaters from across Canada can connect just like the olden day of the 1990's when IPARN linked up across Canada using satellite connections.  I forgot to mention that our President of Linking was one of the 2 main responsible players of the IPARN system that built the infrastructure. so this dude knows linking.  So Canada Hub node #51730 created! Works exceptional, yad yada yada...

The miscreants decided that is would be helpful if they connected up this new Canada Hub to various repeaters across Canada at random times to advertise it's existence.  Careful listening was observed, and interestingly all the repeaters connected to were dead air almost all day long and the rebels thought they had stumbled onto something whereby these little connected to Hams could find connection with others across Canada and put their thousands of dollars of repeater gear to work for our hobby!  The Canada Hub had a few connections per day and all the users observed reasonable QSO lengths and excellent operating practices.  To quote Borat,  "Great success!"

But hold the phone!  In just a few days a couple of the owners of these cold repeaters were complaining about the "unwanted connection" from the Canada Hub, accusing this group of "wrecking their repeaters".  One OM even threatened retaliation by playing tapes of CW practice on the air maliciously if we connected.

So my question to you kind reader of the Amateur Radio operator type persuasion is:   Do you like your Repeaters Cold and your Air Dead?

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