General Items and Social Media Response

To whom may be concerned:

It was brought to our attention recently that some disparaging comments had been made in social media posts about the work of the Southern Nevada Repeater Council, Inc (SNRC).

While the SNRC does not make a practice of commenting on social media posts (because there are so many sources), we make this one-time exception to express gratitude for the effort of those of you who are truly motivated to help out the local radio community and to clarify the record.

Perhaps some context will help with more understanding about the work of local repeater coordination. 

First, we invite you to check out this very detailed SNRC website.  This website explains our role and that we are coordinators first and foremost. Our information posted is less about our radio’s programming and more about keeping repeaters from interfering with each other and helping onboard new repeaters when someone wants to put one on the air. If you are looking for sources to use to program your radio, there are many excellent but alternative sources on the internet and hard copy that provide such detail.  While our experience is that none of those are perfect, some provide a wealth of detail that is helpful for radio programming.  Some radio clubs even offer model specific or CSV ‘codeplugs’ that can be very helpful. 

Back to our job… 

From time to time, the SNRC becomes aware of some owners/clubs whose repeaters have gone off the air due to equipment failure but whose owners are dealing with various medical issues or other personal circumstances of greater priority.  Of course, these are private matters that we do not share in our public database or discuss with others.  In our view these are not things that should be shared in an open forum meeting either.    

As you might expect, there are also those repeater owners that take their repeater down temporarily, move, change to a vanity callsign or vacate their coordination for a multitude of reasons. Some change call signs and ‘forget’ to say anything. Our website and correspondence make it very clear that they are to notify the SNRC of these changes.  You are probably not surprised that we are not always notified of these changes. Sometimes repeater owners actually pass away without notifying us. Imagine that?!  We in the SNRC do our best to keep up by doing our own ‘audits’ (focused now mostly on 2 meters since that has the fewest available) but we have learned by actual experience that trying a repeater even several times in different locations is rarely sufficient to re-coordinate a frequency to someone else AND the circumstances can change in only 5 minutes after the audit is done.  Therefore, it is so helpful for the whole ham community to give input to keep things as up to date as is physically possible at: information@snrc.us. 

Fortunately, further due-diligence recently averted such a double occupancy in such an instance. We must get active consent to protect everyone’s interests. Occasionally this affirmation may take longer than any of us want because we are reliant upon the response of multiple parties to have accurate and actionable information.  Thank you for your patience when this happens. 

Please be assured that if you have helpful information, we will welcome such input offered in the spirit of cooperation. To be most helpful so we can complete our documentation process, please have the actual repeater owners contact us directly to update any inaccuracy you have observed sent to our shared email box:  information@snrc.us. Also, you can send us a note at the same address if you become aware that a former repeater owner is now a SK.

An essential thing to realize is that the SNRC public website-published-database only tells half-the-story.  Why? There are unpublished link frequencies, proprietary notes not visible on the public website lists, cross border interstate coordination and collaboration with Northern Nevada (north of Tonopah, NV), California, Utah, and Arizona coordination authorities, and a myriad of other activities that those that have served as coordinators can more fully appreciate.  Fortunately, over the years the SNRC has built credibility and mutual respect with these contiguous coordinating bodies that serve the Southern Nevada ham community very well and is the coordinating body published on the ARRL’s database of recognized coordinators. The SNRC is the body that these other entities contact when coordinating repeaters in their respective states, but near our Southern Nevada borders.    

Now that you have this understanding, let us now address topics that posted late last week on social media…

The matter related to N8DBM/K7EET could be addressed with a knowledge of the individual circumstances.  Yes, it does appear that the N8DBM (though it appears that someone may still be using that callsign) listing can be removed but our database shows that this repeater pair is also properly listed with a preexisting, current coordination to WB6TNP done long before the social media ‘audit’ took place, on the next line down.  It seems to us that an impartial investigation of this matter would have at least mentioned that overlapping listing.

While it is true that KC7DB (‘Gene’ as he was actually known) passed away 7 or 8 years ago, the repeater Trustee was changed shortly after Gene’s passing.  At one point some of the users of the repeater told us they were considering using Gene’s callsign as a ‘club call’.  When it was determined that this would not happen, the callsign on the repeater was changed to KG7DHB (Darrell SK) who also passed away late last year (December 2021). An on the air check by a Coordinator revealed that the repeater ID’d in CW as KG7DHB legally and lawfully during these 7 or so intervening years when checked periodically. Unfortunately, Darrell never turned in coordination paperwork that we needed as source documentation to change the database. We require documentation before we change our listing to protect the new and old owners in case a disputation ever arises.  This frequency pair is now listed as a W7AOR repeater.  It is temporarily off the air according to the Trustee, pending an equipment upgrade to a MOT Quantar scheduled to be done ‘when the weather cools off’.

These two referenced social media posts and others made, actually underscore the role of a complete understanding and fair representation in Coordination activities and shows how easy it can be to come to improper conclusions based on only partial information.

We respectfully ask those who have posted any subjective, non-factual comments to please consider removing them in the spirit of intellectual honesty and good-faith.  If not, it will not change the actual facts of each of these circumstances and no further comments will be made pertaining to these and subsequent postings on social media.  More directly, we will not be answering further issues brought up in social media posts since there are so many that seem spurious.  Accordingly, to help update the official database and/or to make further inquiry for more information about matters pertaining to local repeater coordination please address your email requests to information@snrc.us .

So, you might ask, what is the incentive of those who serve as volunteers of the SNRC?  We each have a deep love of radio as all of you who read this.  We see this as a way to ‘pay back’ for those who have gone before us in the tradition of professionalism within our hobby.  We hope that you will join with us in the spirit of true teamwork!

Thanks for your ongoing support of Southern Nevada ham radio repeater activity.

73,

The Southern Nevada Repeater Council, Inc. (SNRC)