| |  Back in June, I launched a new project. I was offered a good spot for a repeater on a broadcast station tower, at about the 200' level. I've built backyard repeaters before, just for fun, but never actually built one to stay on the air and serve the community. After a few days of thinking about it, I decided, what the heck, we could use another repeater in town (yeah, right).
The first step was to apply for a frequency through the coordination body, the Florida Repeater Council. I figured a couple of weeks wait, and then I'm off. So I went ahead and bought a duplexer, and scrounged up a GE MVP rig on Ebay. Can't do anything with them until I get a frequency of course.
So, here it is, going on two months from the time I received the reply to my FRC web site submission, and I still haven't gotten a coordinated frequency. In fact, though I've sent several emails to them, I have only received two back. One was "here's your choices, pick some", the other was "thanks for the donation".
I guess I was a bit naive to think it would only be a couple of weeks wait. Since then I keep hearing about horror stories in other states where the 2M band is a lot more crowded. Years to wait to get a freq? not likely. I'm not sure whether to be glad or sad that I live in VHF wasteland. Nothing but the echoing sounds of the fans in the repeater shack. Well, maybe the odd kerchunk now and again......
"I am Jack's wasted life, waiting for frequency coordination"
...73's DE Steve |
