Repeater Road Map

This page reflects the current roadmap for future work on the repeaters SNOVARC owns/maintains.

To improve robustness, we'd like to have, on hand, spare gear to immediately replace items in the Cougar and Bell repeaters.  Rather than simply have spares on hand, we plan to have the spares assembled as ready to go repeaters which can be connected to a power source, turned on, and be on the air.  These repeaters can be used for events, in emergencies, or employed as replacements if the Cougar or Bell repeaters fail.

Pop Up Repeater #1

We'd like to take the existing unused repeater and filter cans in the club shack, and mount it all in a rack, so that it can be easily transported to a site, connected to power, and fired up on very short notice.

The hardware is there, it's been tested, it works.  It's tuned to a currently coordinated pair allocated to Marc C. Miller N6TJQ. 

Shortcomings:

• The current repeater transceiver can only be reconfigured by getting a new EPROM burned, at a cost that's a substantial fraction of the worth of the radio.
• The current repeater only outputs about 20 watts.

The plan going forward is to replace that repeater with a new repeater, same model as is currently in use at the Cougar and Bell sites( Kenwood TK-850 + Arcom RC-210).  The cans will be used (retuned as needed).  All the gear will go in a rack to make it easily transported.

Items to be acquired:

• New Kenwood repeater
• power supply and battery box with batteries
• repeater controller
• Antenna and tripod to put it up.

Pop Up Repeater #2

The second popup repeater would be the same as the first, but obviously configured to a different frequency pair.  In addition to the parts list for the first, we'd need to buy filters.