CARLA - Technical 8

C.A.R.L.A. System 8 Technical Notes and Tidbits

If you're into winter skiing or summer water sports be sure to bring your HT when you visit the Lake Tahoe area. You can get into the CARLA 8 repeater from most ski resorts in the area and from most places on the lake or around the lake with just an HT and a few watts. A few of our users take kiyaks out on the lake on a fairly regular basis and use their HT to talk back to the "crew at the house" in Tahoe City or, with the link PL, to users on the rest of the system. Take a look at the coverage map below to get an idea of the coverage in the Lake Tahoe Basin.

In the future we may put a remote receiver in the Tahoe City area to increase receive sensitivity for even better HT usability at the North end of the lake.

Technical Data for System 8

Repeater Type: Neutek

Controller: SCom

TX Power: 7W

Main Ant Type: M2 Yagi

Main Ant Gain: 7.6dB

Link Ant Type: Diamond X50N

Link Ant Gain: 7.2dB

Local PL: Yes

How the Local PL Works

This particular repeater in the CARLA system has a dual PL. If you use the 'link' PL, your audio is carried over the entire CARLA system of repeaters and you will be able to hear the audio from any and all other repeaters in the CARLA system. If you wish to have a local QSO on the repeater just use the 'local' PL. Your audio will come out only on the local system and you will not hear link audio coming from other repeaters in the system. When you finish your 'local' QSO, the link will re-establish itself several seconds later. A couple of things to keep in mind:
1) If you pause for an extended time during your local QSO the link audio may come back. Just key the local PL to mute incoming link traffic and continue your local QSO.

2) Remember, if there is a QSO in progress elsewhere on the CARLA system you will not interfere with it if you hold a QSO on the repeater while using the 'local' PL.

3) If you want link audio to come back right away just kerchunk the 'link' PL.

4) There is a different courtesy tone for local traffic and incoming link traffic so you'll be able to distinguish from which direction the audio traffic is originating.

CARLA 8 Coverage Map

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