HARC Repeaters

The Holland Amateur Radio Club maintains 3 repeaters under the K8DAA club callsign:

• The ‘Oh Six’:147.06 (+) PL: 94.8Hz
• The “Four Forty:”443.825 (+) PL: 94.8Hz
• The Warm Friend146.500 MHz and receives on 147.500 MHz. PL: 94.8Hz

Let us introduce you to each machine:

“06″

This is the oldest of the three club repeaters. It began life sometime around 1973 and was on 146.88 with tube-type equipment that came from the Ottawa Co. Sheriff’s Dept. It was originally located at the QTH of W8IQF on Lugers Rd. on the west side of Holland. It was soon re-located to the tower of WZND on Main St. downtown Zeeland, which was owned by Chuck W8GCW.

Around 1975, the club purchased a VHF Engineering solid-state repeater, which greatly improved reliability and performance at the time. It was still just a simple repeater with no enhancements, so Harry WB8SHM homebrewed an autopatch for the repeater. The patch served for a number of years until we upgraded to an ACC RC850 repeater controller in 1985 that controlled all functions of the repeater except for voting of the receivers.

The autopatch was discontinued in December of 2009.

Around 1977, the repeater was moved to the tower of Rooks Transfer on Waverly Rd. Greatly improved coverage was the goal and result. That tower was taken down earlier in 2001. It was directly across the street from Meijer’s. When Rooks went out of business in 1981, we moved the repeater to the Holland Hospital, where it is located still today.

In 1983, the VHF Engineering receiver was replaced with a Motorola Motrac, with a good improvement in receive coverage, and in 1984 the VHF Engineering transmitter was replaced with a GE Mastr.

Since then we have added two remote receivers to the system.

The South Receiver is located on a tower owned by Tele-Rad which is two miles north of Hamilton on 47th St. at 139th Ave. The antenna there is about 110 feet above ground level.

The North Receiver is located on a feed mill owned by Hamilton Farm Bureau and is located at US 31 and Van Buren north of Holland. That antenna is 180 feet above ground.

The two remote receivers are linked back to the hospital on separate UHF frequencies. There, the three .66 receivers are connected to a Hall Electronics voter that determines the best signal/noise ratio, and the audio of the winning receiver is routed to the repeater controller for further processing as needed. The ‘voted’ receiver can (and does) change many times per second in response to mobile station travels and multipath changes of the signals at the receivers

The 2m antennas at the hospital and north receiver are Decibel Products DB224, that utilize a vertically stacked array of four exposed dipoles. The south receiver is a Diamond F23 comprised of series-fed quarter-wave elements inside of a fiberglass tube. Both types of antennas yield about 6dbd of gain. The main antenna on the hospital antenna is duplexed, meaning that the .66 receiver and .06 transmitter operate simultaneously into the antenna through a duplexer.

Today, the repeater RF equipment is a mixture of brands. The two .66 remote receivers and UHF link transmitters are GE Exec II. The link receivers are Motorola Micor. The .66 receiver at the hospital is still the Motorola Motrac. The .06 transmitter at the hospital is a GE Mastr II and was installed in April 2001.

The old VHF Engineering repeater is in service on 146.500.

The repeater requires a 94.8Hz tone for access and also transmits 94.8Hz to allow for tone decode in your receiver. Receiver decode makes monitoring the machine much more pleasant, especially when the band is ‘open’ and repeaters signals from across Lake Michigan are strong. (Users without tone encode capability can key 061, which will cause the repeater to go to carrier access. It will in remain carrier access mode until the repeater is idle for 30 seconds, or until 060 is entered.)

The repeater has a remote base at the 145.49 Grand Haven repeater so these repeaters can be linked on demand. It can also be linked to our 443.825 repeater which is co-located at the hospital.

Packet

The club also operates several packet systems at the hospital. The first is a digi-peater that stores and re-transmits digital data sent between users that connect their computers to their radios. It operates under the call K8DAA on 145.07MHz.

Coming soon is a full featured BBS. This BBS has connections to the Internet via Holland Hospital. This affords us connectivity to amateur radio operators all over the world. It also allows us to send and receive E-Mail and News Bulletins to many electronic services.

Another feature coming soon is a digital system is a DX Cluster. The DX Cluster is a special kind of BBS that is tailored to help find and make contact with DX stations. It will show DX calls and frequencies that have been heard. It will also allow you to “Spot” any DX Calls you hear. The DX Cluster can be accessed either from the K8DAA BBS by typing DX on the command line, or can directly be reached by radio on 145.07MHz using the call K8DAA.

Soon the digital system… This system allows access via TCP/IP on 145.07 . This allows access to other amateurs around the world using the TCP/IP protocol. The benefit is that we can do more than just BBS functions. The system allows file transfer, direct E-Mail transfer,
WWW access, etc. Anything you can do with your ISP, can be done using this protocol.

If you ever have any questions or comments about these systems, please feel free to contact Dave.

The Four Forty
Output: 443.825
Offset: +
PL: 94.8

The Warm Friend

The club has another two meter repeater located in downtown Holland atop the Rest Haven Warm Friend. It is a local machine with no autopatch or other enhancements.

NOTE: This repeater with a 1.0 MHz split, It transmits 146.500 MHz and receives on 147.500 MHz.
A 94.8 Hz sub-audible tone is required.

The frequency pair it operates on was set aside as a low power experimental, local, tone controlled frequency, with no minimum mileage separation between repeaters. Hence the tone requirement on this frequency, to minimize interference between user groups.