Repeaters

NØAVH operates two amateur radio repeaters and one GMRS repeater. All are public and open to licensed operators in the community.

Club repeaters

Operated by the Arkansas Valley Radio Club.

Regional repeaters

Rocky Mountain Ham (RMHAM) machines our members use.

Nets

A net is just a scheduled on-air get-together. Ours is as informal as they come.

Programming your radio

The tables above describe the repeaters from the repeater’s point of view. Here’s what that means for the knobs on your radio.

A repeater listens on one frequency (its input) and simultaneously re-transmits what it hears on another (its output). You do the mirror image: your radio listens on the repeater’s output and transmits on its input. The frequency in the tables above is the output — that’s the number you actually dial in.

You don’t have to compute the transmit frequency yourself. That’s what the offset is for: program the offset direction and amount, and the radio shifts automatically whenever you key up. The offsets here are the standard ones — −600 kHz on 2 m, ±5 MHz on 70 cm and GMRS.

Then there are tones. A CTCSS tone (also called PL tone or sub-audible tone) is a low hum, below what you can hear, that rides along with your voice. The repeater ignores any signal that doesn’t carry the tone it expects — that’s how it avoids being keyed up by noise. So:

Your transmit tone (menus call it T-CTCS, Tone, or Encode) must match the repeater’s input tone. Without it, the repeater simply won’t hear you — the classic “I can hear everyone but nobody hears me.”

Your receive tone (R-CTCS, Decode, or Tone Squelch) is optional. Set it to the repeater’s output tone and your radio stays quiet unless the signal carries that tone — nice for filtering interference. But set it wrong and you’ll hear nothing at all and swear the repeater is dead.

Cheat sheet — what to put in your radio

Same machines as above, but from your radio’s side of the conversation.

GMRS note: 462.550 is repeater channel 550 on most GMRS radios (often shown as RPT15 or 550). It requires a GMRS license — no exam, one license covers your whole family. The DMR machine (445.1625) is programmed differently: it needs a codeplug with color code 6 and the talk groups listed above. Ask at a meeting or see RMHAM — someone will happily share a working codeplug.

Example — putting 146.700 into a handheld

Menu names vary by radio, but the steps are the same everywhere.

1. Dial in the frequency: 146.700. This is what you’ll listen on.
2. Set the offset direction: minus (−). On many radios this is menu SFT-D or “Shift.”
3. Set the offset amount: 0.600 MHz. Most radios default to this on 2 m already.
4. Set the transmit tone: CTCSS encode 88.5. This is the one people miss — without it the 700 won’t hear you.
5. Leave receive tone off for now. Once everything works, you can add decode 123.0 if you want the extra quiet.
6. Save it to a memory channel so you never have to do this again.

Then listen for a moment, key up, and give your callsign. Remember the 700 is linked statewide through the Colorado Connection — leave a beat between transmissions so the link keeps up, and don’t be surprised when someone answers from Denver.

DMR, in plain English

Digital voice confuses everyone at first — including plenty of seasoned hams. Here’s the short version, using the analog ideas you already know.

DMR is digital voice, so an ordinary FM radio can’t use it — you need a DMR-capable radio. Beyond that, every scary DMR term is really an analog idea wearing a new name:

Color code ≈ PL tone. It’s the repeater’s gatekeeper, exactly like a CTCSS tone. Our local machine uses CC6. Wrong color code, and the repeater ignores you — same as transmitting without your 88.5 on the 700.

Timeslots are two lanes on one road. A DMR repeater carries two conversations at the same time on one frequency, called TS1 and TS2. Digital slicing lets each conversation use half the airtime, fast enough that you never notice. You just program each channel to the correct slot and forget about it.

Talkgroups are rooms. On analog, keying the repeater means everyone on it hears you. On DMR, you key into a numbered talkgroup, and only radios listening to that group hear you. Think of the repeater as a hallway and talkgroups as rooms off it: 700 is the big statewide ballroom (Rocky Mountain Wide, on TS1), while 719 South and 718 SouthEast (both TS2) are the local rooms where Arkansas Valley traffic belongs. One important difference from analog: a talkgroup that’s silent isn’t dead — it’s just quiet until somebody calls.

A “channel” is the whole recipe. In DMR, one channel = frequency + offset + color code + timeslot + talkgroup. Same repeater, three talkgroups → three channels in your radio. That’s why DMR radios hold hundreds of channels and why nobody programs them by hand on the keypad.

The codeplug is all of it, saved in a file. A codeplug is your radio’s complete configuration, built on a computer and loaded over a cable. Building one from scratch is the single most miserable part of DMR — so don’t. Start from someone else’s working codeplug and change your callsign and ID. This is normal; it’s how everyone does it.

Same etiquette warning as the 700: talkgroup 700 Rocky Mountain Wide keys repeaters across several states. Listen first, keep it brief, and take long ragchews down to 719.

Questions about the repeaters? Contact web@n0avh.org.