I must agree on the need to restrict publishing repeater coordinates. Quite often ham repeaters are co-located with critical infrastructure and that site information is considered to be restricted from "general knowledge". My local county has tightened things sufficiently with our Critical Infrastructure requirements that I may have to create sets of false coordinates to protect our radio sites. That certainly creates additional site management problems. I have until the end of the year to reach a resolution. Further, the use of the coordinates has created a mis-listing for a couple of our repeaters, which for 45 years have been identified with "Monroe County" and not the actual communities in the county where the repeaters are located. Now, to find a "Monroe Repeater", one has to attempt to relate the repeater to rather obscure town in the county because of the listings based upon geographic coordinates. RF finder needs to clean it ALL up or we need to terminate the contract. -- Dale WA8EFK On 10/11/2019 8:34 AM, Greg Sarratt wrote:
Sounds like we are going back to the way it was before rf finder (when the process worked well and we had accurate listings and it was a trusted book) except rf finder is still in the loop.
Southeastern repeater coordinators and repeater owners will not work with rf finder because, rf finder will not protect repeater coordinates, reconginse established coordination groups and compensate for the information.
Many site owners have requirements and agreements with repeater owners to not publish coordinates.
Two coordinators told me they were told by rf finder. If you dont give us your data we will steal it.
Many hams tell me they stopped buying the repeater directory.
Crowd sourcing for repeaters doesn't work. People are inventing pairs, taking over pairs, etc..
I think the solution is to go back to the way we use to do it without rf finder.
73, Greg, W4OZK
-------- Original message -------- From: John Robert Stratton <N5AUS@n5aus.com> Date: 10/10/19 12:26 PM (GMT-06:00) To: arrl-odv@reflector.arrl.org Subject: [arrl-odv:28859] Re: update on the Repeater Directory
None of the Texas/Oklahoma coordinators will work with RF Finder due to the staggering inaccuracies. Their past attempts, according to them, to do so were rebuffed.
They consider the Directory to be trash and our agreement with RF Finder to be slap in their face on their efforts to maintain coordination. Unless we wish to assume responsibility for coordination and unless we make peace with the coordinators, the problems will remain.
_______________________________________
John Robert Stratton
N5AUS
Director
West Gulf Division
Office:512-445-6262
Cell:512-426-2028
P.O. Box 2232
Austin, Texas 78768-2232
*_______________________________________***
** On 10/10/19 11:53 AM, Bob Famiglio, K3RF via arrl-odv wrote:
When we stopped sourcing information from the repeater coordinators and went to crowd sourcing, the quality of the listings dropped considerably. >From my own experience in SE Pennsylvania regarding the greater tristate area, the book is , maybe, 65% accurate at best. Moreover, some repeater owners seem to think they can change their location or PL or power without re-coordinating again because they just upload their new information to the RF Finder. Then they lose their coordination when that comes to light and the wars start. Been involved in those recently. It is going to get worse too unless we support coordination and coordinators.
*Bob Famiglio, K3RF*
*Vice Director - ARRL Atlantic Division*
*610-359-7300*
www.QRZ.com/db/K3RF
*From:* arrl-odv *On Behalf Of *Rod Blocksome *Sent:* Thursday, October 10, 2019 9:21 AM *To:* Michel, Howard, WB2ITX (CEO) <wb2itx@arrl.org> *Cc:* Ford, Steve, WB8IMY <sford@arrl.org>; Inderbitzen, Bob, NQ1R <rinderbitzen@arrl.org>; arrl-odv <arrl-odv@arrl.org> *Subject:* [arrl-odv:28854] Re: update on the Repeater Directory
Thanks for the update Howard. These actions should make the Repeater Directory worthy of the ARRL "brand".
In general, ARRL publications have a reputation of high quality and accuracy which we need to maintain continuously.
Best 73's,
Rod, K0DAS
On Wed, Oct 9, 2019 at 7:47 PM Michel, Howard, WB2ITX (CEO) <wb2itx@arrl.org <mailto:wb2itx@arrl.org>> wrote:
Dear Officers, Directors and Vice Directors,
At the April A&F meeting, an issue was raised about the quality of listings in the Repeater Directory. At that meeting, we committed to study the issues in detail and report back to the A&F in July with a recommendation.
At the July A&F meeting, we committed to work with RFinder to find additional ways to improve the repeater listings which ultimately get published annually in the Repeater Directory. Since that meeting we’ve taken the following steps.
(1) Publication Manager Steve Ford, WB8IMY has taken-on additional editing of the Repeater Directory to correct obvious and glaring errors. For example, frequency coordinators contributing data to RFinder will sometimes include city-name spelling errors, inconsistent naming, and incorrect state abbreviations. To the extent possible, Steve has already corrected over one thousand errors. The corrections are carried into RFinder’s online database and will be reflected in the next edition of the Directory.
(2) We have assigned Member Services Representative Jon Faasen, AA1EZ to serve as liaison to RFinder, supporting anyone who contacts us for assistance with correcting listings in the Repeater Directory. RFinder will work with Jon to ensure the corrections are made, and Jon will reach out to frequency coordinators and Section Managers for any instances requiring additional verification of repeater information.
As we reported at the A&F meeting, the landscape for repeaters has changed significantly in recent years. A proliferation of digital repeaters and related communities maintaining lists of active repeaters has introduced new challenges to the previous single-source model. Repeater users increasingly turn to online services such as RFinder for more-regularly-updated sources of repeater listings, and where listings are contributed and maintained by frequency coordinators, digital network databases, repeater owners, and users. I’m hopeful the additional effort we are making to review and correct listings will contribute to an even better annual Repeater Directory.
73, Howard, WB2ITX
--
Howard E. Michel, WB2ITX
Chief Executive Officer
ARRL, The National Association for Amateur Radio®
225 Main Street, Newington, CT 06111-1494 USA
Telephone: +1 860-594-0404
email:hmichel@arrl.org <mailto:hmichel@arrl.org>
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