Motorola GM-339 and Tait 8110

Just some ex-commercial radios  we playing with for 2m and 70cm

Motorola GM-339 UHF mobiles, and Tait 8110 VHF mobiles.  Excellent radios.

Philips PRM-80 on 70cm

Tim VK4TIM brought me some goodies, a few PRM-80's a 8010 (10channel) for my Echolink node 70cm port and a couple PRM-8020 (64 channel) for general 70cm FM usage in the shack.
Nice little slim-line xcvrs, had not seen these in person before, only from photos. Now, I'll be more active on my local 70cm rptrs.

Tim now trying to make a couple of E-bander PRM-80's work on 6m FM.

2m & 70cm FM activity

the sticky weather of summer has started, with the N.E. breezes hitting Sydney yesterday, creating coastal ducting, some rptrs that were enhanced last night, to the north we had 147.100 Buladelah, 146.900 Newcastle, 146.775 Watigans up to s7 normally s1, 438.025 Newcastle, 438.075 Somersby was up to s7 normally s1, the south 146.700 Ulladulla, 146.975 Robertson up to s9 from s1, then from south west 146.950 Mt Ginini was less than s1, nothing found inland, so looked confined to coastal ducting. Noted that 146.650 Mt Bindo was s1 instead of its usual s9, maybe an inversion, as I noted the Dural 23cm beacon was missing, but re-appeared this morning.

Nothing this morning from any of the distant rptrs, but did hear Dave VK2AWZ talking to Brian (VK2BX) on 146.500 FM simplex from Vincentia (near Nowra) approx 10am. Just checked again for 2 & 70 rptr at 2pm, but nothing. 30deg with 80% humid with thunderstorms approaching from west. Will go see if anything on 52.525 FM simplex.

91.5 Hz CTCSS standard

well, so much for the new 91.5 Hz CTCSS standard adopted by the WIA,
after recently hearing a local 70cm rptr being keyed up by a LIPD.
The funny thing is that particular rptr switched to 91.5 Hz decoding to avoid LIPDs.

What we need to do is find another CTCSS pair to use and make that the next "new" standard.

I still can't fathom why we (in VK2) are moving from the standard of 123 Hz to a new standard of 91.5 Hz, when places like VK7 use a different standard and also in VK5 they use a different
standard again.

What do we have in Sydney now? half the rptrs use 91.5 Hz and the other half still using 123 Hz,
what do we get from this ? a whole heap of unused 70cm rptrs.