Stuart, W8SRC, who maintains the W8SRC Repeater Guide here on KB6NU.Com, operates his own repeater at his home in Dexter, MI. The antenna is not up very high, and it doesn’t have great coverage, but it’s a lot of fun. One of the things that makes it fun is the repeater IDs. Recently, Stuart sent me this message:
I haven’t talked to you in a while, so I thought I would send you these to put on your blog if you’d like! They are the IDs that I have put on my repeater in the past two and a half years (and some that I haven’t). They come from broadcast radio voices that you may recognize, as well as some that you probably haven’t heard. Here is a list of people who recorded IDs for me:
- Chad Beach, W9GGA – September 2014 to current (the high-pitched voice; he has also done some cool Halloween IDs for me)
- Chad Erickson – February 2015
- Del Reynolds, WB8DEL – September 2015
- Edward Fox – December 2015
- Jim Merkel, WB3LPI – May 2016
- Jim Cutler, KS1A – October 2016
- Ann DeWig – December 2016 (the female voice)
Chad Beach has even produced some of the Jim Merkel and Jim Cutler IDs for me – a small sample is also attached.
He sent me a bunch of .mp3 files along with this message. Here’s a selection of the IDs I like best:
I asked Stuart how he got these folks to record these IDs for him and if he thought they’d be willing to do IDs for other repeater systems. He replied:
I first met Chad Beach at the Fort Wayne Hamfest in 2014 (so that would be November, not September), and we immediately had a connection with common interests – plus, he has seen my YouTube videos before, and I have heard him ID one of the Fort Wayne Radio Club repeaters (146.940) before.
As for most of the rest of the voices, I have heard them on the air before, and I did tell them the stations that I heard them on. I just asked them if they could voice some IDs, and most of them said they would.
I first heard Jim Merkel on WJIM-FM in Lansing (then “Oldies 97.5”) when I was only six years old, and I first heard Jim Cutler on WDFN in Detroit (“Sports Radio 1130 The Fan”) at the age of five. I loved both of their voices back then. A while later, I heard Ann DeWig on many stations across the country, and I heard Chad Erickson on WJIM-FM now (“97-5 NOW FM”).
As for Del Reynolds, he owns a 220 repeater up north, and he actually trips a radio station cart deck to play his rotating IDs that you heard in the other blog post. And Edward Fox was actually the introducer for a special concert that I performed in London.
I think, of all the voices, Chad B. would be the most willing to voice IDs for other repeaters. Del would probably be next.
So, the lesson here is that if you want to get a little more professional with your repeater ID, just ask.
John Jieriy says
Hilarious. Congrats. So very well done.
Gary Bernstein says
I do similar VO’s for the K9IIK repeater in Schaumburg, Ill. People ask “who’d you hire to do your announcements, LOL. Listen in on Echolink K9IIK-R.
Gary/N9VU
Stuart Carlson, W8SRC says
I’ve heard you voicing that repeater during a wide-area band opening back in 2013, as well as directly through the AllStar Web Transceiver Portal. Great IDs, and great voice!
Richard Swanson says
Very well done, I like the idea. Hope other Repeaters will do the same thing. 73,Richard,K0RDS
John says
Way back in the early 1980’s I programmed the first repeater in Lake County (Indiana) that had digital voice capability (crude by today’s standards but recorded voice anyway) and one of my favorite IDs was “Transmitting with 50,000 milliwatts of power, this is the WA9JLN repeater — Northwest Indiana’s tower of power!