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 repeaters are on
1300-foot high
Holy Cross Mountain
between South Bend and Raymond, WA., with the several towers on
the hill visible from nearly any place in either city.
There is an unobstructed line-of-sight path from
the Pacific County Courthouse, where the Emergency Operations Center
(EOC) is located. The Courthouse and EOC
are surrounded by high ground on the other 3 sides,
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 repeater platform. 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 northern two-thirds of the
Long Beach Peninsula.
This repeater can be used
south from South Bend on
Highway 101 to well
beyond Bay Center. There is spotty access as far
south as Astoria, OR.
Coverage extends
west along Highway 105 to Tokeland, Grayland
and Westport, and out to sea. The
repeater is easily accessible to the east
throughout the Willapa
Valley and along Highway
6, almost
to the eastern county line.
Coverage follows Highway 101
north to
the Pacific/Grays Harbor County
line. Access is spotty to the north from there,
restricted mostly to high ground.
Even at its relatively low power output,
this repeater
does quite well, within its
intended coverage area.
Linking: 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 remote-base capability,
allowing it to work into
several distant repeaters on either the 6-meter or 70-centimeter bands, as well as having great simplex range on 52.525 MHz, the National Simplex Frequency for 6-Meters.
The 224.820 repeater is intended
to be used as an "intercom" between
the Pacific 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 PCEMA, 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 in the 150-MHz. commercial band)
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, continuous-duty station, so overheating should not be
a problem.
The GE 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 4-cavity, Sinclair BpBr type, mounted
horizontally in the bottom of the cabinet. The
controller is an Arcom RC-210, built from a kit, and
housed inside the repeater station.
Remote Base:
The dual-band FM remote base consists
of a Low-Band VHF GE Rangr commercial mobile radio,
modified to operate on 8-channels in the 6-meter band,
running 80-watts to a Cushcraft Ringo antenna
mounted to the ice bridge on the
building roof. There is a second GE Rangr, on
the 70-cm band, with 13 UHF remote-base linking channels to other
repeaters, and 2 UHF simplex frequencies (446.000 & 446.500).
This radio is
also used for the network link to
BeachNet
when desired.
The repeater shares a Comet CX-333
tri-band antenna with the 2-meter packet station
that also lives at this site.
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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