444.100+

444.100 repeater

PL 114.8 (2A)

last update 09/17/2009

The WVRA 444.100 repeater is located on the FOX 55 tower in the town of Hewitt, northeast of Wausau.  This repeater is comprised of 2 Motorola Radius GM300 mobile radios.  One radio is for receive and the other is used for transmit.  The transmit radio is turned down to 20 watts from the normal setting of 40 watts.  Then it is run into a transmitter 50 ohm pad network to drop the power down to approx 400 milliwatts.  It then goes from the pad network to a GE Mastr II  100 watt continuous duty PA.  The power amp then gets fed to the transmitter side of a Wacom WP-678A duplexer.  The receive radio gets fed directly to the receive side of the duplexer.  The output of the duplexer is then fed to a Telewave cross band coupler that couples the 444.100 repeater onto the same 1 1/4″ hardline as the 147.135 transmitter and the 147.735 receiver.  The feedline then runs up the tower to approx 780 feet.  At this level, the feedline goes to another Telewave cross band coupler to separate the signals out to go to their respective antennas.  A 1/2″ hardline jumper goes from the cross band coupler to the 444.100 Telewave antenna which is mounted hanging down from this antenna mount.  The 147.135/147.735 antenna is mounted standing up on this same antenna mount.  This repeater is controlled by a SCOM 7K controller.  There is also auto patch available on this repeater.  There is no PL transmitted during the hang time of this repeater.  If you have your radio programmed for PL receive, you will not hear the hang time or the courtesy tone.  You will also not hear any of the controller voice announcements.

4/27/07 – Installed a receive preamp and multicoupler on the output of the 449.100 portion of the duplexer.  I also installed a bandpass cavity to get rid of the decense that was being caused by the 147.135 transmitter.

5/28/07 – While doing some other work out at the tower site, noticed that the PL level on the 444.100 transmitter was low (only running about .4khz instead of the normal .75khz).  This will only effect your radio in receive and only if you have tone receive turned on.  Even if you do have tone receive turned on, this may not effect you because most radios these days will decode PL down to a level of about .1khz.  I will rectify this when I get a chance.

10/31/07 – The 444.100 along with the 147.135 went dead during the Halloween Watch.  Went to the site at 11pm and found the UPS was in alarm due to over current.  Moved the power supply for the 444.100 power amp to a non-backed up outlet for now until we can get another UPS.

12/7/07 – Reset the transmit PL level and set the transmit frequency.

9/14/09 – Got an email from Matt N9NMH letting me know that the autopatch wasn’t working.

9/17/09 – Ran out to FOX55 tower today and found that the phone line was bad at the demark box.  Verizon will be called so they can send someone out to fix it.

The WVRA sponsors a weekly net on this repeater on Thursday evenings at 9pm.  This is a general discussion net.  The topic of discussion is usually set by the net control operator.  Check out the net info page to get more information of this net.

444.100 Repeater, Controller, and PA Equipment at the Hewitt (Fox 55) Tower