33
THE DUDDON AND FURNESS MOUNTAIN RESCUE TEAM
REBROADCAST SETUP
Intro
Rebroadcasting to most radios officers was a challenge, but to the average team members it meant absolutely nothing. After a little education, most then
realised the benefits, although that was as far as many wanted to go. They were not interested in how it worked as long as it did. With this in mind, and
the fact that we have large parts of our area that are not in radio range of the base without rebroadcasting, my aim was to make the system as easy to use
and as idiot proof as possible thereby gaining the widest acceptance and subsequent usage by all team members. There are signs that I have achieved this
aim, as a good number of members are now confident with their use.
There follows a section detailing what each group of team members needs to know (Hill party, vehicle and base groups).
Note: I use “repeater” and “rebroadcast” interchangeably in this document, although I am told it should always be “rebroadcast”!
Hill Party
The hill party does not need to know anything. This is common to all the repeater setups providing the rebroadcast channel is used for the “base to the re-
peater” jump and the TWC from the rebroadcast unit to the hill parties.
Although it will usually be the base that controls the repeater, to allow flexibility, I have programmed one of the buttons on the side of the radio to enable a
hill party to switch on/off one or other of our repeaters. This is all done through a single “control button” which is explained later.
Vehicle
To ensure that the repeaters can be remotely controlled, when leaving a vehicle the radio (single control head) must be left on, and the right hand radio
(see later for explanation of this) must be on the TWC. This is the usual operating mode. If a team member is unsure if this is the case, then switching the
radio off then back on will bring it into the required state. There is no requirement to change any aerials over or switch any additional radios on.
When the repeater is on, the control panel in the vehicle displays “Repeater” and all keys are disabled except for the manual repeater control button (the red
one below the on/off switch) and the On/Off switch.
The LED above the On/Off switch also flashes between red and green. I added this during development so I could see if the DMAP board software was run-
ning and decided to leave it in!
(Continued on page 34)
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