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 newer repeater technology (like P25 digital) to IRLP to repeater jammer hunting, to... there is a list of topics at this article ideas page, or if you have an idea on something else that needs to be on repeater-builder (or added to the ideas page), please let us know by sending an email to Kevin Custer W3KKC at (callsign) at repeater dash builder dot com, and run your idea past him. He'll tell you if anybody else is already working on it, or give you a few ideas...

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

• The article has to be repeater oriented (note that I didn't say amateur radio repeater oriented). This web site has info on community repeaters, GMRS (General mobile Radio Service), Civil Air Patrol (CAP) and Military Affilliate Radio System (MARS) repeaters as well. Even the folks that maintain public safety systems (i.e. police / fire / ambulance / etc. service) have thanked us for some ideas...
  
  
• It is written with the understanding that this is the World Wide web and not every reader is either in the USA, or are familiar with USA Land Mobile (commercial 2-way), GMRS, CAP or MARS radio or amateur radio rules. If something in the article relates to rules, explain it, even if you think that 96% of the readers will already know it. If you want, put the explanation in a paragraph at the start of the article and title it something like "Assumptions and background information" - just word that part so it's informative, not condescending...
  
  For example:
  • Band edges can cause confusion: the USA 2m amateur band is 144 to 148 MHz, but in many other parts of the world it's 144 to 146 MHz. Most Civil Air Patrol and MARS repeaters straddle the amateur band, 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 range. The USA UHF amateur band is 420‑450 MHz, elsewhere it's 420‑430 MHz or 420‑440 MHz. The narrower amateur bands in other countries forces different interchannel spacing and different repeater offsets, which can cause problems in equipment conversions. In the USA the commercial and public safety UHF band starts at 450 MHz and can extend as high as 512 MHz, in other countries it's very different.
    
    
  • If your article is, for example, about moving a USA UHF radio from 472 MHz to 447 MHz, you'll have to change the repeater offset from 3 MHz to 5 MHz. 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 and (c) at USA amateur 440‑450 MHz frequencies it's 5 MHz.
    
    
  • In England the repeater has to ID every 15 minutes around the clock whether the repeater has been used or not, and UHF repeaters live in the 433‑434 MHz area with a 1.6 MHz offset.
    
    
  • At the opposite extreme, a GMRS reepater (460 range) in the USA doesn't have to ID at all! This has caught a couple of repeater controller manufacturers, as their products were never designed to not have to ID.
    
    
  • In Europe subaudible tone squelch is not as common as it is in the USA, and 1750 Hz tone burst is still used in some areas.
    
    
  • Autopatches are almost illegal in Australia - a station running in unattended mode (including repeaters, regardless of whether the owner is present or not) is not allowed to be connected to a public telecommunications network, not even indirectly.
    
    
  • Sometimes the radio environment differences can be extreme - in New Zealand there is a radio service called PRS that has 40 channels of simplex and repeaters at 476 and 477 MHz, and the repeaters use a 750 kHz separation... that's right, a UHF repeater with less than 1 MHz split, which requires a completely different thinking about duplexer design and antenna system engineering.
  
  In all of the above examples, to the locals, 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 rules can understand what you are doing and why you are doing it.
  
  
• Consider equipment availability... in the USA you find GE, Motorola, Kenwood, Johnson and Icom to be the big names. In England you will find Pye and other brands are common. In Australia and New Zealand you find Tait. Here in the USA you don't find ANY of the PYE radios and I've seen exactly one set of Tait. Then there are the differences in marketing - in Europe the Motorola MT1000 is called an HT600E... the hardware is exactly the same except for the label. An article on the radio needs to mention that. Consider that someone outside the USA may have seen a Motorola or GE radio only on an American TV show or in an American movie.
  
  
• 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 review of the basics in the first few paragraphs, or they will skip ahead. In other words, write to the level of your audience: for example a duplexer article would be written to someone who knows what a duplexer is, but probably does not know the details of how it works - yet.
  
  
• If you are writing a product line description article (like Systems Saber or GM300) that is based on another series (i.e. Saber or Maxtrac) please include a reference to the other article... i.e. build on that foundation.
  
  
• What terms will you have to define? The standard New York Times writer's guide (originally written in the 1930s) specified that the writers would spell out every abbreviation the first time it was used, 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).
  
  
• What background information will you have to include? An article on controlling RF power level with a DAC will need a two or three sentence overview of just what a DAC is. If there is a good overview article at another web site, the 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 them somewhere in the article.
  
  
• Another consideration is why your audience is reading the document... often referred to as the purpose of the document. Is the document supposed to inform, discuss, or convince? The majority of the articles at this web site are informing... If we had articles on spacing adjacent 2m channels at 15 kHz versus 20 kHz we might have some rather strident articles in the "convince" category... and if you would like to write one, take this as an invitation to do so. Just keep it calm and technical and let your facts do the arguing.
  
  
• 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 Mitrek Interfacing article as an example of inside-the-article jumps).
  
  
• Then there are the verboten topics: politics, religion, sex, local coordination problems (and how your friend got screwed), regulatory body (i.e. the USA FCC) issues and rules and how your interpretation of them is right and everybody else's interpretation is wrong. Those are the big ones, not much else is on that list.
  
  
• 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 Kevin's work, and it took involving the legal system to get it stopped. On the advice of counsel the 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:

• A conversational, down-to-earth style which avoids pontificating.
  
  
• Stories that cover the basic W's of writing: who, what, when, where, why. Not every article needs the "who", or the "when", but there are those that do...
  
  
• Any interesting details that make the story come alive. Like why you jumpered the DC power switch on the link radio.
  
  
• This is last for a reason... please make an effort in correct spelling, punctuation and rules of grammar... have somebody (or two) locally review your writeup before you send it to us... we can fix some (it's what editors are for...), but do remember that repeater-builder is run 100% by volunteers. And none of our volunteers are English majors.

The actual submission:

1. To help the staff keep track of the files, please format the first few lines of the main article file like this:
   
   1. (file name) by (author's name, callsign, email address)
   2. The author's contact phone number (and hours that you can be called - and don't forget to include your time zone... as an example, not all W1s are in the Eastern Time Zone, and not all W6s hams are in California)
   3. - - - (the three dashes are just a separator between the header and the body of the article)
   4. (article starts here)
   The two lines above the "- - -" is for use by the repeater-builder staff during article editing - nothing above the line will be published. We're just making sure that we can contact you from the info in the article file just in case it gets separated from the email that it was attached to.
   
   
2. Write your article in a word processor with the spell check turned on. Yes, that would seem obvious, but you'd be surprised...
   
   
3. Don't indent with spaces on the first line of each paragraph. Limit your formatting (if any) to font size, boldface, underline, italics, tables and numbered or bulleted lists (like this numbered list, and the bulleted lists above). Don't use Word Perfect's double-underline feature as there is no web page equivalent. The web defaults to font size 3, and can be changed to anything from 1 to 6, sometimes specified in relative sizes from a baseline of 3. For example, ‑1 is size 2, normal is size 3, +1 is size 4, +2 is size 5, and +3 is size 6.
   This is a size 2 sample, this is in italics and this part is in bold.
   This is a size 3 (normal) sample, this is in italics and this part is in bold.
   This is a size 4 (+1) sample, this is in italics and this part is in bold.
   This is a size 5 (+2) sample, this is in italics and this part is in bold.
   This is a size 6 (+3) sample, this is in italics and this part is in bold.
   And there is nothing preventing you from using bold italics.
   
   
4. When your article appears on the web page your photos will usually go between paragraphs, and where a picture is supposed to appear in your text just drop two lines, insert the phrase "((photo N goes here))" or "((schematic N goes here))" - where N is the number - then drop two lines and start the next paragraph. As the editor creates the web page he or she will find the "((" markers and replace them with the HTML coding that will display the appropriate photo or schematic file.
   
   
5. Speaking of pictures, please shoot lots (and lots) of digital pictures - they really help especially on modification articles. There's no film expense on digital pictures and shooting extras costs nothing but a little more time. Please shoot them at the highest resolution (i.e. the biggest file size) that your digital camera can do, and let us resize them. Watch for simple things that can ruin a picture (i.e. glare), use an off-angle light source so the glare bounces somewhere else, and if needed use two lighting sources to cancel the shadows. Don't use flourescent lighting (even the twisty compact fluorescents) - it makes the pictures come out with a weird green tint - use incandescent or sunlight. If the intent of a certain picture (in, for example, a modifcation article) is pointing out a certain component on a densely stuffed circuit board, please include a pointer of some kind - a pencil, a pen, anything (even a 1/4" by 1/2" triangle cut from masking tape).
   
   
6. Please preview your photos - the little screen on the back of the camera hides a lot of problems - and being out of focus being the biggest one.
   
   
7. Pictures need to be in PNG, JPG or GIF format for the web and we can convert TIFs / TIFFs from your scanner if necessary. If your digital camera generates JPG files, no conversion is necessary. PNGs and JPGs are preferred since they have a much wider color spectrum than GIFs which are limited to 256 colors (or 255 colors plus transparent). Please name the photos in all lower case either with a descriptive name (like front-end-before-disassembly.jpg), or something like photo‑01.jpg, photo‑02.jpg, photo‑03.jpg, etc.
   
   
8. If you are going to include schematics, please scan them at a size of at least 300 dots per inch and let us resize them. If the schematic is all black and white, please use the monochrome mode on your scanner software (i.e. if you aren't using color, there is no sense in including the binary color info in the scan file, as it unnecessarily makes the file at least 3 times larger). If it is a color schematic then scan it in color and save as GIF format if you can, or JPG if that's all the scanner software can do (GIF is usually smaller than JPG for the same material, and the 256 color limit of the GIF format doesn't affect schematics). Please name your schematic files either with word descriptions (like front-end-schem.gif) or as something like schem‑01.gif, schem‑02.gif, in a similar fashion as the photo files mentioned above.
   
   
9. If you are showing a dimension change in your article (like rewinding a front end helical from 150 MHz to 220 Mhz, or cutting an antenna from 866 MHz to 902 MHz), please put a ruler or tape measure in the picture. As a courtesy to the other 90% of the planet that thinks in metric, please use a double scaled ruler or tape measure if you have one.
   
   
10. Then save the file with a file name that has no spaces or punctuation (like exclamation points or dollar signs) in the name, in all lower case, and please use dashes instead of underlines, for example, "maxtrac‑800mhz‑to‑900mhz.txt" as opposed to "MaxTrac 800MHz To 900MHz!.TXT".
    
    
11. Then create a single zip file containing your entire article plus any picture files, schematic scan files or other files. Even if the Word file has the photos inside it, please include them separately (the Word file will have them resized, and we need them raw). Think of the zip file as being the envelope for an entire article package.
    
    
12. Then send the article zip file attached to a covering email that mentions who you are, what the article is and how the editor should contact you. No, that last part is not obvious... we have had several submissions from folks that normally use a home dialup connection, and they have used a thumb drive or a floppy to take their zip file to work and used the work email address, or a public library computer (that has a high speed connection) or used a friend's DSL or cable modem to send us the article zip file. In those cases the email account that sent the zip file is not the author's preferred contact address, so please make sure that the body of the email (that the zip file is attached to) contains your preferred contact address. As I said before, we're just making sure that we have a good way to contact you either from the email or from the header inside the article itself.
    
    
13. Once the article is in the editor's hands, he'll convert it to HTML and upload the page to the repeater-builder server, under a "hidden" page name (i.e. it's on the web server but since it's not connected to any index page the public can't see it). The editor will send you an email with a private link to that hidden web page. You will be able to click on the private link and see your article's web page, knowing that the only two folks that can see it are you and the editor. At this point you and the editor can email each other back and forth and "fine tune" the article, making the changes that are necessary to get your point(s) across. The editors that convert your submission are not English majors, and you need to proofread your work. Once you are happy, the page becomes public.
    
    

Another option that has been used to get a large quantity of information to the repeater builder staff is to burn a CD and recycle an old AOL CD mailer. We have over 1.8 GB (yes, gigabytes) of GE radio documentation on line for free download and almost all of it showed up on CDs in ex-AOL mailers.

If you have FTP we have an anonymous FTP "Incoming" folder with several dozen gigabytes of storage available to us. Contact WA6ILQ at (callsign) at repeater-builder dot com for details.

That's about it...

/s/ The repeater-builder staff...
Kevin W3KKC,
Scott N3XCC,
Mike WA6ILQ,
Bob WA1MIK,
other anonymous editors,
...and all the current contributors...

This page first posted 14-Oct-2004

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Text and hand-coded HTML © Copyright 2004 and date of last update by Mike Morris WA6ILQ