South Bend
Pacific County, WA
46.707558, -123.769484
1300 Feet
Call: NM7R
224.820 -1.600kHz 82.5Hz
South Bend 220 Repeater
Note the 82.5 Hz CTCSS (PL)
Tone on the 224.820 repeater
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Location: The South Bend station is on Holy Cross Mountain
between South Bend and Raymond, WA., with the several towers on
the hill visible from nearly any place in either city.
The site is line-of-sight from
the Pacific County Courthouse, where the Emergency Operations Center
is located. The Courthouse and EOC are surrounded by higher ground,
with only poor VHF/UHF paths to the rest of the county. While
Holy Cross Mountain blocks simplex signals to the north, it also
provides an excellent platform for a repeater. Follow these
links for information on the co-located
147.340 MHz and 442.675 MHz
repeaters.
Coverage:
The "Holy Cross"
224.820 repeater
can be used from most of
Pacific County, including
the bulk of the
Long Beach Peninsula.
This repeater can be used
south from South Bend on Highway
101 beyond Bay Center, and has been
worked from as far south as Astoria.
Coverage extends
west on Highway 105 to Tokeland, Grayland
and Westport, east
throughout the Willapa
Valley and on Highway
6, all the way
to the eastern county line,
and follows Highway 101
north beyond
the Pacific/Grays Harbor County
line.
Even at its relatively low power output,
this repeater
does quite well, within its
intended coverage area.
The 224.820 repeater is normally
linked into
BeachNet,
however, it can be disconnected from the Network and operated stand-alone.
This repeater also supports a 6-meter remote base capable of working
several distant repeaters, as well as having great simplex range.
The 224.820 repeater is intended
to be used as an "intercom" between
the County EOC at South Bend
and the AEOC at Long Beach.
The 6-meter remote base
can be shared by these
stations to monitor or join one of the State
emergency Nets on that band.
This flexible functionality
supports the Pacific County
Emergency Management Agency,
providing intra-county and
extra-county back-up
emergency communications.
Hardware: The
224.820 repeater consists of
a GE Mastr-II
High-Band VHF continuous duty base station
converted to operate on the 1.25-meter band.
The transmitter consists of a
PLL-type exciter
modified to operate at 224-MHz,
instead of the original frequency of 150-MHz.,
and a home-brew power amplifier that
puts out about 25-watts. The
power amplifier is mounted to a heat sink
originally intended
for a 75-watt station, so overheating should not be
a problem.
The receiver, also heavily modified,
has a sensitivity of
better than
0.2-microvolt for 12 dB SINAD. A GE Audio Card
is used for audio processing, and a
Communications Specialists TS-64-ds CTCSS decoder
is mounted on the Audio Card to handle receiver access.
The duplexer is a Sinclair BpBr type, the
controller is an Arcom RC-210, built from a kit, and
housed inside the repeater station.
The 6-meter FM remote base consists of a GE Rangr radio
running 80-watts to a Cushcraft Ringo antenna above the
repeater building roof. There is a second GE Rangr, on
UHF, used for a network link. The repeater shares a
multi-band antenna with the 2-meter packet station.
Packet Radio: The
"HOLYX" packet
radio node is located on this site
as well.
This is part of the 145.630
MHz 1200-Baud
Washington District Three
EOC Packet Network.
Also at the site is
the "HOLYMB"
public mailbox. There is no
forwarding or other service
with this mailbox, but it
is available for any Pacific
County Amateur to use,
provided that they will
check frequently for mail.
This allows those who
choose not to maintain
a full-time
packet presence to have
a 24/7 mail drop available.
The HOLYX packet
station is owned by Pacific
County Emergency Management
Agency, and is considered
part of the South Bend
EOC RACES Amateur radio station,
which it supports.
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