I have been hearing rumors that “everybody” thinks the delayed drop off is too long and users are getting tired of waiting for the repeater to drop before they can resume their QSO. There appears to be some wide spread misunderstanding about Delayed Drop Off and the Courtesy Tone. The Courtesy Tone is just that… we wait for the Courtesy Tone to see if there is any emergency traffic or another user who would like to join the QSO. The Courtesy Tone has no effect on the timers in the system. Although not advisable (see “Poor Operator Practices”) you can even ignore the Courtesy Tone and it will not cause the system to operate any differently, it simply reminds us to be good operators.
The Time Out Timer is dependent on the Carrier Operated Switch, so in other words, the moment you unkey the timer is reset. NOT when the repeater drops. The repeater is rated for 100 percent duty cycle and runs cool as a cucumber. A QSO can continue indefinitely without the repeater dropping and the Time Out Timer will not engage. If a “stuck Mic” should occur on the repeater it will Time Out until the stuck Mic is unkeyed or the system is remotely turned off. I believe the Time Out timer is set to 2 minutes. I hope this has helped clarify the issue.
Rory Bowers, K5CKS