Repeater Terminology and Jargon
At first, the new ham may be confused or unfamiliar with the bells, whistles, and jargon encountered while operating on a repeater. By no means complete, the following definitions are offered to help the new ham and the experienced operator gain a higher lever of operating comfort and repeater expertise.
What is a REPEATER ?
A repeater is a specially built transmitter and receiver, placed at an advantageous location, that automatically repeats signals it hears out to other stations that would normally be unable to hear the signals directly, thus extending your communications range.
What is a TIMER and what is RESET ?
Repeaters often incorporate a TIMER or transmit time limiter to control the length of a single transmission from a user. The time limit is set by the repeater owner. The term RESET applies to when the timer is reset back to zero and normally occurs when the carrier of the transmitter drops.
What is a CONTROL OPERATOR ?
The Part 97 of the FCC Rules requires all stations in the Amateur Service that are capable of operating unattended must be monitored for proper operation while in the unattended mode. This monitoring function is accomplished by a control operator. This person can be the licensee of the station or his or her designee. In many cases, he or she also ends up being the person that answers questions about the repeater. The monitoring requirement is waived for repeater owners that incorporate CTCSS in their repeater.
What is PL ?
PL, an acronym for Private Line, is Motorola's proprietary name for a communications industry signaling scheme call the Continuous Tone Coded Squelch System, or CTCSS. It is used to prevent a repeater from responding to unwanted signals or interference. Tone is an electronic means of allowing a repeater to respond only to stations that encode or send the proper tone. Any station may be set up to transmit this unique low frequency tone that allows the repeater to operate. ARRG repeaters do not use PL tones.
What is an AUTOPATCH ?
An autopatch is special equipment incorporated in a repeater to allow the user access to the public switched telephone system. The repeater owner may limit access to certain individuals or limit the types of calls that can be made to insure proper operation and prevent misuse.
What is WHITE NOISE ?
White noise is a scientific term used to describe a spectrum of broad band noise generated in a receiver's detector and sampled to control the receiver's squelch. This term is often incorrectly used to describe the sounds heard when the received transmission is noisy and hard to understand, usually attributed to a weak signal.
What is meant by the term DOUBLED ?
Doubled or doubling is when two parties attempt to talk at the same time through a repeater Seldom does this work and normally happens accidentally. Doubling is akin to being 'walked on', a common CB term.
What is INTERMOD ?
Intermod, short for inter modulation, is the generation of unwanted signals by the inadvertent mixing of several strong transmitters. This mixing can occur at the repeater site or in your own receiver, depending on the circumstances. A good example of interference caused by intermodulation is the strange overriding signals experienced while driving in a large metropolitan area. Strong signals emanate from high power paging or dispatch stations transmitting simultaneously and mix in your receiver or in some cases, mix in another transmitter somewhere and re-radiated to your receiver. The result is a mixture noise, garbage, paging tones or voices coming out of your speaker on certain ham band frequencies. The term intermod is frequently used by hams to label any unexplained noise or interference heard on their receiver.
Portions of these two pages are reproduced with the permission of the Western Washington Amateur Relay Association.