TARC’S DMR Server
Tamiami Amateur Radio Club’s DMR repeater is located atop a 200’ tower at Paul Morris Industrial Park in Englewood. It’s roughly 10 air miles from downtown Venice. The repeater transmits on 444.1 MHz and listens for us 5 MHz higher with color code 1. If you are programming your radio to use our repeater, you should have it receive on 444.1 MHz and transmit to the repeater on 449.1 MHz. The repeater is tied directly to a Brandmeister Master with no “C Switch” between us. This means any of the (over) 1200 talkgroups Brandmeister carries is available for your use on this repeater. As you probably already know, DMR repeaters have two time slots, which enables two completely different conversations to take place at the same time on the repeater. The way we utilize this feature is we reserve timeslot 1 for Local 9 (talkgroup 9), which is just local repeater traffic, it’s not connected to the Internet. Timeslot 2 is where we activate the distant talkgroup we are interested in using. A list of Brandmeister’s talkgroups can be found at: http://www.mw0mwz.co.uk/dmr_bm_talkgroups.php
For example, if you wanted to use the Florida Statewide talkgroup, you’d find its talkgroup number as 3112. You need to program your radio for talkgroup 3112, assign it to timeslot 2 with color code 1, receive frequency 444.1 MHz and transmit frequency 449.1 MHz. After you program your radio with these characteristics, you turn it on and hear…nothing. The reason is all talkgroups coming through our repeater are on an as needed basis which is usually referred to as “PTT.” Nothing is connected to the Internet until you ‘kerchunk’ the repeater. Should you ‘kerchunk’ and hear someone talking, that talkgroup will stay active on our repeater for 15 minutes after the last conversation and then automatically disconnects. If no one was speaking when you ‘kerchunked’ the talkgroup will disconnect in 15 minutes, assuming you didn’t begin transmitting or someone else begin using the talkgroup during that period.
If you want to leave a radio on all day long while you putter around the house or whatever, set it for Local 9 (talkgroup 9, timeslot 1). Local 9 is not “PTT” and is always active, thereby ideal for full time use on our repeater.
Please feel free to use the repeater as much and as often as you desire, except Tuesday evenings at 7:30 PM (local time) on timeslot 2 where you will hear the “TARC DMR Chat Net” using talkgroup 311. Local 9 is still available to you at this time, but a better idea would be to join in with us. It’s rather informal in content and open to any amateur worldwide.
73,
Frank Wroblewski, W2XYZ
Repeater Coordinator