I’ve gotten a couple of inquiries from new hams lately about using repeaters and programming their radios. So, I did a little searching for YouTube videos, and came up with the following:
Repeater 101 for new Amateur Radio Operators
In this presentation Bob Schmid, WA9FBO, of the Northern Colorado Amateur Radio Club discusses all you need to know to get started with using repeaters. He talks about transmitters, receivers, controllers, duplexers, combiners, repeater sites and of course, antennas. It’s a little long, but worth the watch.
Baofeng UV-5R: Add CTCSS and DCS Codes & Tones On The Keypad And Connect To & Talk On A Repeater
The most common reason that newcomers are unable to access a repeater is that they’re radio isn’t programmed to send a CTCSS tone. This video offers step-by-step, button-by-button instructions to program a Baofeng UV-5R to use CTCSS tones or DCS codes using the keypad, not the CHIRP programming program.
Understanding CTCSS and DCS
This video explains the basic technical principles behind CTCSS (continuous tone coded squelch system) and DCS (digitally coded squelch) as well as how they are used in analog radio systems, such as amateur radio FM repeaters. The content in this video is not strictly related to amateur radio applications, but it’s still useful info.
DCS is sent LSB to MSB? Really? Almost all over-the-air (or -wire) protocols are big endian, meaning the bits are sent from left-to-right if the diagram is shown with the MSB on the left end, which is common usage.
Just want to know if there is a legitimate site that has a list of repeaters with their ctcss tones… all I can find are BS sites…