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The UARC 146.62
Synchronous/Voting Repeater System
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Farnsworth
Peak and Scott's
Hill
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The UARC 146.62 repeater system presently consists of two sites
- the Farnsworth Peak and Scott's Hill repeaters.
These are linked together full-time and function as a single
wide-coverage repeater - see the Coverage Map
to find out where!
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The Scott's Hill site, looking
toward the north and east with the lights of Park City visible in the
background. This site provides coverage east of the Wasatch into
the Park City and Heber areas as well as into southwest Wyoming - not
to mention helping to fill in "holes" of coverage elsewhere!
Click on the picture for a larger version.
What is a Synchronous/Voting repeater system?
Although used frequently in the commercial radio world, synchronous
and/or voting repeaters aren't too common in Amateur Radio use.
Knowing that, however, you may still be wondering what, exactly, a
"synchronous" (also called "simulcasting") or "voting" repeater
system
is?
Synchronous
transmitters:
If you have used 2 meter of
70cm FM very much at all you'll already be familiar with what happens
if two transmitters key up on the same frequency: Often called
"doubling", one typically hears a bit of a squeal and a
mish-mash of
noises as the signals from both stations obliterate each other, making
both of them uncopyable.
You may have also noticed
something else that occasionally happens: One station will "win"
the double by overriding the other. In these situations you may
not even have noticed that two people have keyed up at the same time
until someone unkeys and you hear the "other" person that had been
transmitting underneath. In these cases you witnessed the "capture effect"
- that is, the ability of a strong FM signal to override the other with
little evidence of the weaker one.
In the first case where there
was no clear winner - only a mish-mash of noises - the two signals were
probably of roughly equal strength at the receiver (either yours, or
the
repeater's!) but if one signal is much stronger than the other, the
strongest
one comes through quite clearly with, perhaps, only a little bit of
noise in the background being the only evidence that there was someone
else
transmitting at the same time.
Why, then, would one
intentionally put two transmitters on the same
frequency if they are going to clobber each other?
Again, it comes back down to
that "capture effect" - but with a twist: If the two transmitters
are very close to the same frequency and they carry the same
audio, then it turns out that they do not obliterate each other as they
would otherwise. Having two transmitters on the same (or very
close to the same) frequency is often referred to as having synchronous
transmitters as well as simulcasting.
In reality, the two
transmitters do not need to be on exactly the same
frequency, but
just "very close" (within a few 10's of Hertz) to each other If
this is the
case then one will typically hear one transmitter OR the
other at any
given instant with "destructive interference" occurring only when the
signals from both transmitters are of nearly identical signal
strength - but even then, the two signals probably wouldn't obliterate
each other, but more-likely cause a little bit of distortion - but not
so much that intelligibility was compromised.
You may be familiar with the
fact that you can move
your Handie-Talkie's antenna just a few inches to find a "hot spot" and
considering that, you can already appreciate how hard it might be to
find a spot
where two signals are of precisely the same strength: If you are
in a moving vehicle, you probably won't notice that you are hearing
two, identical transmitters at all! If you mobile are in an area
where the signals between the two transmitters are approximately equal
overall, you probably won't notice any evidence of the two transmitters
at all, aside from a bit of "picket fencing"
as your receive alternately hears one transmitter or the other.
In testing, we have found that offsetting the two transmitters by
somewhere in the 35-60 Hz area provides the most aesthetically pleasing
effect in those areas where the signal strengths of the two
transmitters
are precisely equal: For this reason, the term "synchronous" may
not be completely accurate.
Why have multiple
transmitters?
So, what's the advantage of
having two transmitters on the same frequency, then? If you have
these two transmitters at different sites - especially ones that have
minimum to moderate overlapping coverage - you can then use just one
frequency to cover a larger geographical area. Not only does this
conserve frequency spectrum by using just a single frequency, but it
also makes using the system much easier as you don't
have to keep switching from one repeater's frequency to another as you
move through their coverage areas - as you would had you been trying to
use different-frequency
repeaters that were linked together!
There's another benefit of
having two transmitters on the same frequency and that's the fact that
the total coverage is greater than the sum of its parts! In other
words, in those "fringe" areas where you might get little bits of
signals from either transmitter, having multiple transmitters at
different sites on the same frequency helps "fill in" those tiny gaps
in overage where one would otherwise have to constantly switch between
different repeaters to find the best coverage as you would in a
conventional linked system where the transmitters were on different
frequencies!
For a set of maps
showing the predicted coverage of the Farnsworth Peak, Scott's Hill and
the combined transmitters, visit the 146.620
Coverage Map page.
Voting receivers:
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The receive site at Farnsworth
Peak. This site provides coverage along the west side of the
Wasatch Front, to the west past the Nevada border, to the north into
Idaho, and beyond Utah county to the south.
Click on the picture for a larger version.
If you have wide-area coverage
with multiple transmitters, what good is it if the users can't get back
into the system everywhere that it covers? That's where having "diversity
reception" - multiple receivers tuned to the
same receive frequency - comes into play.
As you might imagine, two
receivers located at two different sites won't hear the same
transmitter equally: Usually, the one closest to the transmitting
station will get the best signal while the more-distant one will be
more-likely to have the worse signal. Again, if you've used FM
very much, you'll know that this isn't always the case as local
obstructions (buildings, hills, mountains, etc.) will sometimes cause
blockage of the more-local repeater while you can still get into the
more-distant repeater.
In the case of a voting system,
all the audio from the different receivers is sent to one place
and there the voting controller analyzes all of the signals from every
receiver in the system and picks
the best one to be transmitted by all of
the sites. How does it "know" which is the best signal?
Using FM, you may be
aware of something else that happens as signals get weak: The
audio doesn't get softer as the signal gets weaker, rather it gets
noisier
until the audio is lost
completely in the noise: It is this same "noise" that your
receiver uses for the radio's squelch - and by the time it gets too
noisy
your squelch has probably closed and you
don't hear anything! It makes sense, then, that if you have two
signals from two different receivers that you see which of the two
is noisiest:
Knowing that, you can decide not to use the noisiest
signal(s) and pick the "cleanest" one instead!
Imagine, then, that you have
several receivers listening to the same mobile signal as it drives
around amongst buildings, trees, hills and mountains. Sometimes
it
may be getting into one site better than the other, but other times it
may be the other way around. By having a voting system constantly
looking at the signals from all of the receivers we can always take the
best signal at any instant from the receiver that has it!
Just as with synchronous
transmitters, the coverage of the entire receive system is greater than
the sum of its parts! If you are in a location that isn't covered
well by either system alone, there's a better chance that with multiple
receivers hearing you you'll have a good signal into at least one
of them at any given instant, and with the system automatically looking
for the "best"
signal it will be that one that will be heard by everyone
listening. Unlike a linked repeater system with different
repeaters on different
frequencies, you don't have to worry if you happened to choose the
"best" repeater for your location!
How can I tell what I'm hearing?
Because all receivers and
transmitters in the 146.620 linked system are operating on the same
frequency, you may wonder how
you can tell what site you or someone else is getting into and/or which
transmitter
you are hearing. In order to be able to tell which receiver and
transmitter is hearing and being heard, some "beeps" have been
added. If you listen carefully, you can determine both which
transmitter you are hearing and where the last person
that
transmitted was being received.
Where the beeps come
from:
- All
transmissions from Scott's Hill have a "transmitter beep" that occurs just
before the
repeater itself un-keys, but the transmissions from Farnsworth do not
have this beep.
- Those signals that were received at
Scott's Hill have a beep added to them just after the
user on Scott's unkeys - but a half-second before the
repeater itself drops: Signals going into Farnsworth don't have a
beep added to them.
Unless you have a
trained ear, you may have a bit of difficulty trying to figure out
exactly when each beep occurred, so here are some simple rules:
No beeps at all - audio clip:

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The different sounds and beeps
heard on the 146.620 repeater system.
Top Left: The squelch tail from a user getting into
Farnsworth who is being heard via Farnsworth. Notice that there
are NO beeps.
Top Right: The squelch tail from a user getting into
Scotts who is being heard via Farnsworth. Notice the beep immediately
after the first squelch burst.
Bottom Left: The squelch tail from a user getting into
Farnsworth who is being heard via Scotts. Notice that in this
case the beep happens immediately before the second squelch
burst.
Bottom Right: The squelch tail from a user getting into
Scotts who is also being heard via Scotts. It is only in
this case that you will hear two beeps!
Left-click on an image to "hear" what that squelch tail
sounds like, or right-click to view a larger version of each image.
- If you are hearing a station
with no beeps at the end of the transmission at all, then you can be
sure that you are hearing someone who:
- Is being received
at Farnsworth
Peak, and
- That you
are hearing
Farnsworth Peak.
You will likely
hear no beeps if you are
along the Wasatch front (Salt Lake, Ogden or Provo) and talking to
someone else who is also along the Wasatch front.
You are hearing two
beeps - audio clip:
- If you are hearing two
beeps - one immediately after the station transmitting into the
repeater unkeys and other one just before the transmitter drops - you
are:
- Hearing a station that is
getting into Scott's Hill - which accounts for the first of the
two beeps.
- You are also hearing
Scott's Hill's transmitter - which accounts for the second of
the two beeps.
You will
likely hear two beeps if you are in a location east of the Wasatch and
you unkey, or if you are talking to someone else who is also east of
the Wasatch.
You will only
hear two beeps if you are in a location where you can hear the Scott's
Hill transmitter instead of Farnsworth, and this will probably happen
only if you are somewhere to the east of the Wasatch front.
You are hearing ONE
beep:
Unfortunately, this can be
confusing at first - at least until you know exactly what to listen for.
- Again, if you hear a beep just
after the other person unkeys (as in, just after the "ker" in
"kerchunk") or if you are hearing someone who is getting into Scott's -
audio clip.
For those who are musically-inclined, the "Scotts Receiver" beep is
close to being a "G".
- If you hear a beep just
before the repeater drops (just before the "chunk" in
"kerchunk") you are hearing a
"transmitter" beep - audio clip.
The "Scotts Transmitter" beep's pitch is close to a D#.
If this sounds confusing, just remember this if you hear only one
beep:
- If you are in Salt Lake, Provo or Ogden or anywhere west
of the Wasatch mountains: If you hear a beep, you are hearing
the Farnsworth transmitter and the beep indicates that you are
listening to
someone who is getting into Scott's.
- If you are east of the Wasatch mountains such as
past Parley's Canyon on I-80, in the Park City or Heber areas:
In these areas, you will
be hearing the Scott's Hill transmitter rather than Farnsworth - but
you are hearing someone who is getting into Farnsworth.
In this case the beep you are hearing is from the Scott's Hill
transmitter.
Different numbers of beeps:
As you might guess, if you are leaving an area that is covered by one
transmitter and going into an area covered by another - or if you are
listening to someone who is mobile and moving between coverage areas -
you can expect to hear different numbers of beeps as you (or the person
using the repeater) goes in and out of the various coverage
areas. This shouldn't
be too surprising, however, as one area is covered better by one site
than another!
Sometimes, a person is in a location where they can get into both
Farnsworth and Scott's equally well. In this case, the voter will
randomly choose which receiver (the one from Scott's or the one from
Farnsworth) to use. Since both are equally good signals, there's
no real way to tell which one is "better" so it's the luck of the draw!
Technical stuff: How the system works
If you are are a technical person
and are wondering how this system works, read on! If you
aren't technical - but are still interested - read on, anyway:
You'll either learn something, or you'll fall asleep!
Synchronized Transmitters (a.k.a. "Simulcasting")
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The "guts" of the Disciplined
Oscillator. This unit locks a standard GE "EC" ICOM to a 10 MHz
OCXO to provide precise frequency control. There are two such
units - one each at Scott's and Farnsworth.
Click on the picture for a larger version.
Technically, the transmitters
aren't actually synchronized to each other, but are held to the
intended transmit frequency with high accuracy - typically being within
1-2 Hz of their intended frequency. To do this, 10 MHz oven-controlled
crystal
oscillators (OCXO's) are used at each transmitter to provide a
highly-accurate (approximately 10E-8) frequency reference.
Setting frequency offsets:
Even though the transmit frequencies can be set to within 1-2 Hz of
each other, one may not wish to do this, particularly for those areas
in which signals from both transmitters may be
heard.
Soon after installation, we heard from Brett, W7DBA, who lives
in a remote community. It turns out that he doesn't hear either
Scott's Hill or Farnsworth very well, but hears both equally
poorly. As luck would have it, propagation has often caused both
signals to be of almost identical signal strength at his house when
received on an omnidirectional antenna! Needless to say, this
particular situation is unlikely to occur anywhere, but Murphy's Law
would seem to make it inevitable for someone!
As the opportunity arose, we worked with him to find a frequency offset
that provided the "least annoying" effects, and here is what we found:
- Offsets of <1-2 Hz: A slow "swishing" sound, but
when the propagation effects caused the signal strengths of the two
transmitters to be precisely equal to each other, the squelch
would close and parts of words/syllables would be lost. Most of
the time, it wasn't particularly bad or annoying as it wasn't too
often that the signal strengths were close enough to each other than a
complete signal cancellation would occur.
- Offsets of 2-10 Hz: Ugh! This caused words to
be chopped up - like trying to talk through a slowly rotating fan!
- Offsets of 10-30 Hz: While word intelligibility was
improved, this was considered to be
pretty annoying - especially at the low end of the range below 20
Hz! He likened the effect to an engine running nearby, with the
words chopped up. Even though it was somewhat more
intelligible
than the 1-2 Hz offset range, listening to it was rather tedious.
- Offsets of 40-60 Hz: Although there was a bit of a
"buzz" in the background, it was quite copyable when the two signals
were of nearly-equal strength, it wasn't "bad" to listen to.
Although not as aesthetically pleasing as the 1-2Hz offset rate, at
least audio didn't get holes punched in it - causing the loss of
syllables - if the two signal strengths were precisely matched.
Based on these observations, we
left the frequency offset in the 50-60 Hz range: At some point
we'll do further field observations and make necessary modifications.
In addition to adjusting the frequency offset, it is important that the
audio phase of the transmitters be set equally - that is, all
transmitters' deviations should go up and down at the same time.
If this isn't done, addition distortion can occur on the overlap areas.
Another factor that can affect how overlapping transmitters affect each
other is the time-of-flight delay. Since light travels at a
finite speed, the signal from the nearby transmitter will reach you
before the signal from the more-distant one will.
More
significant, however, is the fact that the "slave" transmitter not only
has to send its audio to the master site (on Farnsworth) but then
Farnsworth has to send it back again. Not only is this extra
"round trip" adding a bit of extra delay, but also do the transmitters,
receivers in the link to and from the master site. As it turns
out, matching this delay is less-important than many make it out to be
- particularly if only radio links are used. It is far
more important to make sure that the phases of the audio match overall
(particularly in the low-to-mid speech range) and that the frequency
offsets are adjusted to reasonable values.
How it works:
For transmitting, GE Mastr II exciters are used at each site, but
instead of using standard channel elements (called "ICOM"s by GE) there
are modified channel elements that plug into the standard, unmodified
GE exciter that accept oscillator-frequency inputs from an external
source - a device called a "Disciplined Oscillator." This
Disciplined Oscillator module uses a PIC-based synthesizer to precisely
lock a standard, unmodified GE "EC" type channel element to the crystal
frequency - which is, in this case, 1/12th of the transmit frequency,
or 12.218333 MHz. Using DDS
techniques, the crystal frequency can be adjusted and the
ultimate transmit
frequency can be tweaked in steps of approximately 2 mHz
(yes, that's millihertz and NOT Megahertz!) at
the VHF transmit frequency, so the
ultimate accuracy of the transmit frequency is essentially that of the
10 MHz
OCXO. The output of the "EC" ICOM in the Disciplined Oscillator
is then buffered and fed to the exciter via coaxial cable to the
modified channel element.
Why use the GE Mastr II exciters? For one thing, they are readily
available on the surplus market. Another important point is that
the GE radios are phase-modulated
instead of being frequency-modulated.
Why is this important? With phase-modulated transmitters,
the actual frequency source of the transmitter (in this case, that
being produced by the transmitter's channel element) is un-modulated
and simply needs to be held to the correct frequency.
Using phase-modulated transmitters greatly simplifies the overall
system design because having to use frequency modulation would require,
as the name implies, that the frequency of an oscillator be
modulated! The need to change the oscillator frequency by
modulating it with audio conflicts with the concurrent need
to keep the transmitter precisely on-frequency: In other words,
you are both trying to keep the oscillator on-frequency and
you
are purposely changing its frequency by putting audio on it - and when
you do this, some compromises have to be made in the overall design.
Practically speaking, one could use a frequency-modulated, synthesized
transmitter and simply make sure that the reference frequency of each
transmitter is held to very tight standards, but those who have
carefully observed such transmitters have noted that the
actual frequency tends to wander around the intended frequency and only
on "average" does it tend to stay close to intended frequency. It
is these
low-frequency variations that are most-critical in a
synchronized-transmitter system: Modulated PLL
(Phase-Locked Loop) transmitters tend to wander around 10's of Hz (or
more!) with
modulation as the PLL tries to keep the oscillator on frequency
- despite the modulation put on it for the express purpose of knocking
it
off-frequency! It is these slight differences (10's of Hz to
100's of Hz) in transmit frequency that tend to be most-noticed in the
overlap areas between transmitter sites.
A phase-modulated transmitter, on the other hand, has a rock-solid
oscillator frequency that never changes. It is also the intrinsic
nature of the phase modulator to resist low-frequency modulation as it
is, in fact, rather difficult to achieve much modulation at low audio
frequencies (such as those used for subaudible
tone encoding) with a phase modulator. By virtue of this
fact, the phase-modulated transmitters are arguably rather
better-suited for
synchronous operation in a communications radio system such as an
amateur repeater!
For Scott's Hill, a minimally-modified GE radio is used for
transmitting: The only modification required is that to bring in
the signal from the Disciplined Oscillator from the outside requiring
the installation of a connector on the transmitter's case. The
actual transmitter itself is stock, with the modified "EC" channel
element being plugged in where a standard channel element would
go! In fact, should the Disciplined Oscillator fail, one could
simply unplug the "EC" element from it, put it in the exciter, and then
set it to frequency as one would on a "normal" repeater as it would
still get its compensation voltage from the receiver's channel
element: In this configuration the transmit frequency would not
be held to such great accuracy, but it would still be perfectly
functional.
For Farnsworth Peak, the original 2-watt exciter was replaced with new
exciter based on an unmodified GE Mastr II exciter. The exciter
board was mounted in a shielded enclosure along with a regulated 10
volt supply, a simple transmitter keying circuit and a voltage
reference for the temperature compensation line to allow possible
emergency use with the un-locked "EC" element. As with the
Scott's Hill transmitter, the signal from the Disciplined Oscillator is
brought in via a modified "EC' channel element but it, too, could also
operate at reduced frequency accuracy by installing the channel element
from the Disciplined Oscillator. The output of the exciter is
boosted to the 2-3 watt level using an external amplifier module and
that is
used to drive the same 100 watt external power amplifier that had
originally been driven by the old exciter.
The Disciplined Oscillator module has another function: To
control the local VHF transmitter and the UHF link
transmitter. Since the Scott's Hill site is normally
functioning as a dual cross-band repeater, there needs to be a means to
provide transmitter control, provide a legal ID on the UHF link
transmitter, and to insert the 3.2 kHz "squelch tone" on the UHF link
to Farnsworth as noted below. For the VHF transmitter, the
Disciplined Oscillator inserts a "transmit beep" to identify to the
users that they are hearing the Scott's transmitter and not Farnsworth.
The Disciplined Oscillator (as well as the Voting Controller) have
RS-485 multi-drop interfaces that allow them to be connected on a
common bus, providing a means of remotely controlling and configuring
them.
Voting receivers
Getting the received signals from Scott's Hill to Farnsworth:
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The front panel of the 8-channel
voting controller. Status LEDs indicate current and past
receiver/voting activity. The UHF link radio (to/from Scott's) is
partly visible above.
Click on the picture for a larger version.
To allow the use of multiple
receivers for "diversity
reception",
the audio and COS (Carrier
Operated Squelch) information
from the Scott's Hill receiver is shipped to Farnsworth Peak via a 70cm
link. At Scott's, the audio from the 2 meter receiver is placed
on the 70cm link transmitter along with a 3.2 kHz "squelch tone" that
is used to indicate the COS state of the Scott's receiver: When
the 2 meter squelch is open on Scott's, the UHF transmitter is keyed
up and the audio from the VHF receiver is relayed on the link, but the
instant the 2 meter squelch on Scott's closes the
receiver's audio is muted and the 3.2 kHz tone is activated and
transmitted for the duration of the "hang time" of the UHF link
transmitter.
At Farnsworth the COS signal from the UHF link receiver and the
presence of the 3.2 kHz tone together form the COS signal used to feed
the voting controller: If the COS drops or if a
3.2 kHz tone is detected, the voting controller gets a "squelch closed"
indication from Scott's, but if the UHF receiver's COS is active without
a 3.2 kHz tone being present, the signal is considered valid.
Why is there a 3.2 kHz tone at all? In theory, the VHF receiver's
COS could have been used to key the UHF link transmitter and the UHF
link receiver's COS could have thus signaled the VHF COS state at
Scott's,
but this scheme would inevitably introduce an extra burst of squelch
noise as the UHF receiver's squelch opened and closed. By having
the 3.2 kHz squelch tone signaling the closing the the squelch at
Scott's these extra "squelch noise" bursts are eliminated. At
Farnsworth
there is a detector specifically for the 3.2 kHz tone, but it does not
respond instantly so a 3.2 kHz notch filter in the voted audio
prevents users from ever hearing that tone at all.
The 3.2 kHz tone also serves another purpose. The voter itself
determines the signal quality by comparing the amount of energy of each
receiver channel after it passes through a 3 kHz, 3-pole Butterworth
high-pass
filter. Actually, this 3 kHz filter doesn't resemble much of a
"brick wall" as it still allows quite a bit of audio energy through
down to 2 kHz
or so, but it is these "higher" audio frequencies that tend to "noise
up" first as signals get weaker and it is this "noise plus audio" that
is
actually measured: By seeing which of the channels has the most
"noise plus audio" one can determine which signal is, in fact, the
noisiest overall. Since the 3.2 kHz squelch tone is quite strong,
it will be "seen" by the voter as "noise" and since that tone only
appears at the instant that the squelch from Scott's closes, it further
reinforces the fact that the signal from Scott's at that moment is
"bad" and should not "win" the vote.
Using the "local" receiver at Farnsworth:
For the "local" signal from Farnsworth we had the luxury of having
direct access to the COS lines - after modifying the existing
controller. Almost from the beginning the Farnsworth Peak
repeater has had a remote-controlled squelch to allow adjustments
without having to visit the the mountaintop - a near-impossibility in
the dead of winter! Because the repeater uses a receiver located
at a remote site several hundred feet away - and the tendency of
a high mountain to accumulate lighting, all signals had to be
transformer-coupled - including a PWM-encoded squelch signal.
With the squelch circuity entangled within the original controller,
modifications were made to break out the receiver audio and the decoded
COS line. In addition to these two lines this modification also
made available a "COS Input" and "Receive Audio Input" line by the
simple expedient of interrupting those lines internally and routing
them externally, allowing us to insert the Voting controller into the
circuit: This had the effect of allowing the Voting controller to
be "seen" by the original repeater controller as just a single
receiver. For diagnostic and "backup" purposes there's even a
"voter bypass" switch that returns the controller to its original
configuration, allowing it to look at the Farnsworth receiver only.
The Voting controller, like the Disciplined Oscillator, is custom-made
and it has provisions to allow up to 8 different receivers to be
used. To accommodate varying levels of audio and the expected
different amounts of audio "coloration" - both of which could affect
the ability of the controller to vote equitably - a number of different
parameters are provided to adjust channel gain as well as the "noise
detector" gain. With the proper adjustments the voter can be
"tweaked" so that equally-noisy signals from the two different
receivers - the one from Scott's via the UHF link and the one from the
local Farnsworth VHF receiver - can be also voted equally, or even
adjusted to slightly favor one site over another.
Even with the adjustments available on the voter, a 3.5 kHz lowpass
filter was added at the input of the local receiver audio at
Farnsworth. This was done because, unlike the audio from Scott's,
this is "local" audio, fed by copper wire from the receiver. As
such it contains more high-frequency energy in its audio than does the
audio from Scott's - which loses some of its high-frequency content
because of its passing through the link transmitter and receiver.
With that "extra" high frequency energy present the voter would tend to
see more of what it considered "noise" on the audio of those signals
being received at Farnsworth than it would on a signal of
equal-quieting being received at Scott's and passed over the link and
therefore, it would tend to deem signals received at Farnsworth to be
"worse" than those received from Scott's even if they were equal.
The addition of this lowpass filter is "invisible" to the user, but not
to the voter!
An additional feature provided by the voting controller is the ability
to insert a
"Squelch Beep" on a received signal after its COS drops. At the
moment, this feature is used only to indicate signals that originate
from Scott's Hill.
The link back to Scott's:
The output of the original Farnsworth controller feeds into the
Disciplined Oscillator module which, in addition to frequency control,
has another function: To provide direct control of the local VHF
transmitter and the UHF link transmitter. In the case of
Farnsworth, the Disciplined Oscillator uses the PTT signal from the old
controller to know when to key both the VHF and UHF transmitters.
Additionally, the two audio inputs of the Disciplined Oscillator are
fed
from
one source - the output of the original repeater controller.
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Wider-angle (top) and a zoomed-in
view of Scott's Hill, as seen from Farnsworth Peak. Both of these
pictures have been "adjusted" to compensate for some of the haze in the
air at the time the picture was taken.
Click here for an annotated version
of the lower picture that points to the precise location of Scott's
Hill.
Click on the picture for a larger version.
While the Disciplined Oscillator
inserts a "transmitter beep" on the
VHF transmissions from Scott's, this feature is not used on Farnsworth
as no beeps were required and the audio is passed straight through the
the VHF exciter with this
unit adding some extra hang-time. For the UHF transmissions to
Scott's, however, as soon as the PTT signal from old controller drops,
a 3.2 kHz "squelch tone" is activated, signaling to Scott's Hill that
its hang time is to begin. In this way, the extra burst of noise
from the UHF link's squelch tail is suppressed and the hang-time of
both the Scott's Hill and Farnsworth Peak VHF transmitters may be
synchronized to drop at the same time.
"YAFB" (or, "Yet
Another Fine Box"):
Because the new devices have RS-485 interfaces, it is possible to
interconnect them and provide control via one interface. One
option of this "command and control" is to have a device controllable
via the receiver using DTMF, returning information to the control
operator.
This box, presently
only in use at Farnsworth (because we haven't gotten to
Scott's...) allows the operator to remotely read and modify parameters
as well as reporting the status of various devices, and it can do so in
either Morse or ASCII AFSK (e.g. RTTY) allowing either "human"
interfacing or a computer running an RTTY program.
The "Scott's Hill"
controller:
There is yet another box at Scott's Hill - a repeater
controller. This is a modified NHRC-4 controller and its function
is simple: To make the system legal.
Normally, Scott's Hill operates as a dual cross-band repeater:
2-meter signals received at Scott's are relayed to Farnsworth on UHF
and the UHF signals from Farnsworth are retransmitted from
Scott's on 2 meters.
The Disciplined Oscillator provides an ID for the UHF link to
Farnsworth while the normal repeater ID from Farnsworth on the UHF link
and is thus repeated, identifying both it and the VHF transmissions
from Scott's. In this mode the
NHRC-4 controller does absolutely nothing other than "listen" for
commands.
What if we needed to turn Scott's off for some reason? To do
this the NHRC-4 controller can disable the transmitter control
provided by the Disciplined Oscillator and put the repeater in
"Standalone" mode. In this mode the Scott's Hill site can
function as an independent repeater, apart from Farnsworth Peak and
once so-configured, one may disable the on-site transmitters
completely!
Comment: At the moment the controller at Scott's
Hill is running the original NHRC-4 software. In 2010 (or sooner,
if snow conditions were to permit!) this software will be replaced with
a custom-written version as there are a number of things that we would
like to have the controller do - but it can't owing to the fact that we
are using the controller in a way that the original designers didn't
envision. For the time-being, however, it serves its main purpose
of being able to remotely turn the Scott's repeater on and off!
Go back to the UARC repeater information
page...
This page last updated on 20100111