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Writing for Repeater-Builder How to make it easier for the volunteer editors / webmasters...

First of all, Repeater-Builder is always looking for articles on various topics - everything from increasing the effectiveness of repeater and base station antenna systems to linking systems to newer repeater technology (like P25 digital) to NXDN, IDAS, Fusion, IRLP, repeater jammer hunting, to... ???

There is a list of topics at this article ideas page, but if you have an idea on anything else that you feel should be on repeater-builder (or added to the ideas page), please let us know by sending an email to one of the web masters (see the "Contacting Us" page here) and run your idea past us. We can tell you if anybody else is already working on it, or share some ideas.

And If you see an error, or multiple errors, on an existing page don't be afraid to contact the author. Even spelling errors.

Since all of the work on Repeater-Builder is done by volunteers, here are some guidelines that will make their life much easier (and while it looks lengthy there is good stuff here, please read it all the way to the end):

• The article has to be repeater oriented (note that we didn't say amateur radio repeater oriented). This web site has info that is applicable to public safety systems (i.e. police / fire / ambulance / etc. service), GMRS (General Mobile Radio Service), Civil Air Patrol (CAP) and Military Affilliate Radio System (MARS) repeaters as well.
  
  
• Consider what your audience already knows about the subject. Assume nothing other than what he or she would learn by being a repeater user. Those that know more won't be offended by a one-paragraph review of the relevant basics in the beginning of the article, they will just skip ahead.
  
  
• The article is written with the understanding that this is a USA web site on the World Wide Web and not every reader is in the USA. If it's a modification article the local Rules may not be relevant, but if it's an article on point-to-point links there might be a Rules-relevant portion. If something in the article relates to rules, please add a short paragraph that presents a bit of backgrouned and title it something like "Background Information".
  
  For example:
  • Band edges can cause confusion:
    • The USA two-meter amateur band is 144 to 148 MHz, but in many other parts of the world it's 144 to 146 MHz.
    • The USA Civil Air Patrol is part of the Air Force, and MARS repeaters are also military. Most of the repeaters in both services straddle the amateur band(s), with most having an input on one side of the ham band (i.e. 143.something) and an output on the other side (i.e. 148.something or 149.something), but a few have both the input and the output in the 148‑150 MHz range.
    • The USA UHF amateur band is 420‑450 MHz, elsewhere it's 420‑440 MHz or 420‑430 MHz.
    • The repeater segment of the USA UHF amateur band is 440‑450 MHz, with a 5 Mhz offset. Some areas have the repeater inputs from 445‑450 Mhz with the outputs 5 MHz lower (sometimes referred to as in‑high, out‑low). Other areas have the inputs from 440‑445 MHz, with the outputs 5 Mhz higher (in‑low, out‑high). If your article would be affected by a "upside down" UHF repeater you would need to mention that fact, and why.
    • In the USA the commercial and public safety UHF band is 450‑470 MHz and depending on the area can extend as high as 512 MHz (in 6 MHz increments). In other countries it's very different.
    • The narrower amateur bands in other countries forces different interchannel spacing and different repeater offsets, which can cause problems in equipment conversions. For example, in England the UHF repeaters live in the 433‑434 MHz area with a 1.6 MHz offset.
    
    
  • If your article is, for example, about moving a USA UHF radio from 472 MHz to 444 MHz, you'll have to change the repeater offset from 3 MHz to 5 MHz, and might have to change the offset from plus to minus. So you'll have to mention in passing that: (a) the 470 MHz range in the USA is commercial two-way and public safety, (b) the standard repeater offset in that range is 3 MHz (c) at USA amateur 440‑450 MHz frequencies it's 5 MHz. and maybe (d) in your area it's a minus offset.
    
    
  • Sometimes legalities come into play and need to be mentioned. For example in England the repeater has to ID every 15 minutes around the clock whether the repeater has been used / is being used or not. At the opposite extreme, a GMRS repeater (460 range) in the USA doesn't have to ID at all! Both of these issues caught a couple of amateur radio repeater controller manufacturers by surprise... Some units were designed with only a usage based ID mode (the USA FCC amateur repeater rules), and the design had to be revised to offer two additional modes: a "never ID" mode and a "beacon ID" mode.
    
    
  • In Europe subaudible tone squelch is not as common as it is in the USA, and a 1750 Hz tone burst is still used in some areas. Very few repeater controllers availble in the USA support tone burst, Arcom is one that does.
    
    
  • A telephone interconnect (autopatch) is almost illegal in Australia - a repeater running in unattended mode (regardless of whether the owner is actually present or not) is not allowed to be connected to a public telecommunications network, not even indirectly.
    
    
  • Sometimes the radio environment differences can be unusually difficult - in Australia and New Zealand there is a radio service called PRS that has 40 channels of FM simplex and repeaters at 476 and 477 MHz, and the repeaters use a 750 KHz offset... That's right, a UHF repeater with way less than 1 MHz split, which requires a completely different thinking about duplexer design and antenna system engineering. See https://www.vkham.com/resources/cb-uhf-vhf-marine/frequency-usage for info.
    Update: In 2019 they went to narrowband and doubled the channels to 80.
    
    
• In all of the above examples, to the local hams, that's what they are used to... it's the way it is, that's the way it's always been, and will be for quite a while. As you write the article (regardless if you are in the USA or not), just make sure that someone not familiar with your local situation can understand why you are doing what you are doing.
  
  
• Consider equipment manuals and parts availability... in the USA you find GE, Motorola, Icom, Kenwood and Yaesu/Vertex to be the common names. Consider that someone outside the USA may have seen a GE radio only on an American TV show or in an American movie.
  
  In England you will find Pye and other brands are common. In Australia and New Zealand you find that Tait is common. Here in the USA you don't find ANY of the PYE radios and I've seen exactly four Tait radios (of two different models) in 40+ years. And parts and manuals for many brands are unavailable.
  
  
• What background information will you have to include? An article on controlling RF power level with a DAC will need a few sentences describing just what a DAC is. If there is a good overview article at another web site, then provide a link to it. An article describing modifications to a tube-type RF power amplifier might need a paragraph on why neutralization is necessary. Also, as mentioned above, if local regulations influence the circumstances under which the work described in your article was done, mention that.
  
  
• Assess how your audience will read your article. Will they read it straight through just once like a fiction story or will they read it slowly like a textbook? Will they return to reread specific sections? If it's going to be something that they will come back to regularly, you might want to put a table of contents in it with the list comprised of section jumps (look at the Antenna Systems page as an example of inside-the-page jumps).
  
  
• Lastly, note that you, the author, retain all rights to your article. The repeater-builder web site is full of copyright notices only because a while back there was a gentleman selling CD copies of the entire GE section on eBay, making a serious profit off of our work, and it took involving the legal system to get it stopped. On the advice of counsel the repeater-builder web site is copyrighted on every page, but the author's copyright supercedes the web site copyright - which is designed only to cover any material that is not copyrighted by someone else.

What we would like to see:

• Articles that include the basic W's of writing: who, what, when, where, why. Not every article needs the "who", or the "when" or the "where", but some articles will...
  
  
• A conversational, down-to-earth style which avoids pontificating.
  
  
• Any interesting details that make the story come alive. Like why you jumpered the DC power switch on the link radio.
  
  
• What terms will you have to define? The standard New York Times writer's guide (originally written in the 1930s, occasionally updated and still in use) specified that the writers would spell out every abbreviation the first time it was used in an article, followed by the abbreviation in parentheses, and only then could the writer use that abbreviation later in the article. Many of today's newspapers, like the Wall Street Journal have a similar policy. We do the same with any uncommon abbreviations like digital-to-analog converter (DAC).
  
  
• Your article should pass the "I'll have someone who isn't an expert on the topic read it and let me know if it's understandable" test. Structure it as if you would be explaining the topic to a bunch of students in a lecture hall. Spell words out if necessary. Please don't use "texting" abbreviations like LOL, BTW or FYI.
  
  

The actual submission:
Obviously you would have been in contact with a staff member during the article discussion. Please just send him/her an email with an attached zip file. Inside the zip file is the article file and a any other relevant files... JPGs, whatever is appropriate. The article file woudl be a Word or similar document.