442.375 MHz Repeater

Background

From my location, I could not hit any repeaters. Since I'm up on a hill I thought that probably means nobody down in the valley would be able hit any repeaters.

So I put up a repeater. First it was something something I cooked up with a couple Motorola Radius mobiles. But, that was eventually replaced a Motorola RKR1225 rackmount repeater that operates on 442.375 MHz with a PL tone of 100 Hz set to low power to transmit at 25 watts. It uses a Motorola Battery Revert kit and a Lithium deep cycle battery to handle brief power outages.

The repeater is located on the side of the mountain above Leslie. While it provides limited coverage, it at least provides an option for the town of Leslie, or folks from Marshall if they want to sit up on Devil's Backbone. It will also provide brief coverage for people passing through the area. Hopefully with the coming antenna upgrade and relocation coverage will increase though.

Since there isn't a large number of hams in the area of coverage for the repeater I decided to link it to the AllStar Link network and link to the Natural State Network. This allows folks to monitor and talk to folks in other parts of the state.

Coverage

Since the repeater is located on the side of the mountain, it provides coverage mostly to the North over and through the Wiley's Cove area and valley towards the northwest to the backbone. With the present antenna, recieve is very limited to the south and east. There are plans to remedy this though by replacing the 53" 6dBd gain antenna with a 17' 11dBd gain antenna and then locate it a littler higher to get better coverage to some of the surrounding areas.

Here are some computed models of what the coverage is based on the present power, antenna, and of course geographic features and restrictions. Please note that these are just models and actual coverage may vary.

Linking

The repeater is linked to the AllStarLink network. The node number is 62777. The repeater is linked to the Natural State Network via the AllStarLink connection. The Natural State Network is a collection of repeaters and simplex nodes that are linked together to provide coverage across the state of Arkansas.

This page provides the realtime status for the repeater's AllStarLink node: http://stats.allstarlink.org/stats/62777

Here is a link to the Natural State Network: http://www.naturalstatenetwork.net

Upcoming Improvements

The antenna is a Tram 1477 53" fiberglass vertical with 6dBd gain. The feedline and mounting are both current opportunities that are most likely affecting reception and coverage. The antenna is presently on a 20 foot mast. The antenna is going to be upgraded and then relocated above a structure, and during that relocation the feed line is going to be upgraded.

The repeater, controller, etc. are going to be placed on a UPC uninterruptable power supply unit to provide power conditioning and backup power in case of power outages.