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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 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... And we've been thanked by government agencies as well.
  
  
• The article is written with the understanding that this is a USA web site on the World Wide Web and not every reader is either in the USA, or are familiar with USA Land Mobile (commercial two-way), GMRS, CAP or MARS radio or amateur radio rules. If something in the article relates to rules, please explain it, even if you think that 96% of the readers will already know it. If you want, put a few lines in a paragraph at the start of the article and title it something like "Assumptions and 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). USA UHF GMRS, commercial and public safety repeaters are 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 (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 1750 Hz tone burst is still used in some areas. Very few repeater controllers 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, Yaesu/Vertex and Johnson 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.
  
  
• 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 relevant basics in the beginning paragraphs, or they will skip ahead.
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• 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 VHF channels at 15 KHz versus 20 KHz we might have some interesting 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 GE index page as an example of inside-the-page jumps).
  
  
• Then there are the verboten topics: politics, religion and sex. The almost-verboten topics include local coordination problems (and how you or 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 ones that come to mind as your author write this... 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 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 "how does it sound if I read it out loud to others" test. And 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 "text" abbreviations like LOL, BTW or FYI.
  
  
• Write your article in a word processor with the spell check turned on. Yes, that would seem obvious, but you'd be surprised... 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: