FVARC Flathead Valley Amateur Radio Club

After Spectrum abandoned their Blacktail Mt site, forcing us to remove our repeater as well, we bought a new Hytera "mixed-mode" DMR/Analog FM repeater to replace the old GE Master II.

The Hytera is located on Buffalo Hill in Kalispell (hosted by KA5HKT, who owns RadioActive) and is now operational. To use it in analog mode, you need to reconfigure your radios to use CDCSS (DCS) instead of CTCSS (Tone). The DCS code you'll want to use in your radios' encode and decode programming is 152N. The "N" stands for "Normal"; that is, noninverted, which is represented by an "I" instead of "N".

DCS is more robust than simple tone squelch and, if your analog programming for this repeater channel uses it in your radio's RX configuration, you won't be bothered by the otherwise annoying buzz that you'll hear when the channel is being used by a DMR conversation.

This repeater is linked to the Brandmeister DMR global network, meaning that, through it while in DMR mode, you can converse around the world with other hams in any one of hundreds of "Talk Groups (TG)" (Think "chat room").

Unlike analog FM repeaters, DMR repeaters can support two simultaneous conversations, with one on Time Slot 1 (TS1) and the other on TS2. Talk Groups NW7RG and MPRG1 are statically assigned to TS1 and the Montana TG is statically assigned to TS2. TS2 can also be used for dynamic assignments which last for 15 minutes at a time.

Both Time Slots used Color Code 1 (CC1).

More information about the Brandmeister global repeater and hot spot network and its long list of Talk Groups can be found here: www.brandmeister.network.

Please show your appreciation to KA5HKT (Mark) by visiting his store at 35 Heritage Way in Kalispell, or online at: http://radioactiveinc.com/.