kelpie@fluke.UUCP (Tony Garland) (10/24/84)
I am trying to ascertain whether to purchase a kenwood 2600 HT. Previously, I
have tended to stick with ICOM equipment and have found it work well, but I am
intrigued about the 2600 DCS (digital controlled squelch) feature. My wife and
I live in a situation where we have no phone and it would seem that DCS could
be just the ticket for us to be able to communicate without one or the other of
us having to monitor through bunches of unrelated chatter on the repeater. I
myself have not been very active (up to now) on 2 meters, but a contact of mine
pointed out the following two drawbacks with DCS.
(1) The tone burst which preceeds each transmission to open the squelch of
the "target" receiver bothers other hams on the repeater.
(2) Many repeaters don't pull in fast enough. This results in the leading
part of the tone burst getting dropped by the repeater thereby
corrupting the code. This could be overcome by keying the repeater
(without DCS on) to bring it up, then enabling DCS and re-keying to
send the tone burst.
And now for the questions:
* Does a DCS tone burst really sound that obnoxious?
* Has anyone used the 2600 DCS and found drawback (2) to be the case?
* If so, how have you worked around it?
* Is there any way of delaying the tone burst after the HT is keyed to
allow for the turn-on delay of a typical repeater?
Tony Garland, N7DX decvax\
John Fluke Mfg Co. ihnp4 >!uw-beaver\
PO Box C9090 allegra >!fluke!kelpie
Everett, WA 98206 USA ucbvax >!lbl-csam /
(206) 356-6213 hplabs/parnass@ihu1h.UUCP (Bob Parnass, AJ9S) (10/26/84)
I have more fun with my TR2600A than I've had with any HT since 1970.
> * Does a DCS tone burst really sound that obnoxious?
Yes.
> * Has anyone used the 2600 DCS and found drawback (2) to be the case?
I tried using the DCS once with a friend on simplex just to see
if it worked. It did. Never tried it through a repeater, but
a digital burst is sent both at the start AND the
end of the transmission, so if the opening burst didn't make it,
the closing one will.
--
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Bob Parnass, Bell Telephone Laboratories - ihnp4!ihu1h!parnass - (312)979-5414