Nicolai Mountain
Clatsop County, OR
46.08625, -123.45217
3007 Feet
Call: K7GA
444.500 +5MHz 118.8Hz
52.810 -1.7MHz 100Hz
Nicolai UHF Repeater
Nicolai Packet Station
K7GA 6m Repeater
Nicolai has generator problems
causing frequent intermittent
power and repeater outages.
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Location: The Nicolai Mountain radio site is a
few miles south of the
Bradley Summit (Bradley Overlook State Park wayside) on
Oregon Highway 30, southwest of Westport, Oregon. The
sheer eastern
face of the mountain angles south-southeast from the summit
on Hwy 30, climbing to 3000-feet. The radio site is at the
south end of this ridge, at its highest point,
overlooking Jewell, Mist, Vernonia,
and the Nehalem River Valley. The vantage into the
Longview/Kelso area is good, as well as into some parts of
the Portland Metro area. The land is
part of the Clatsop State Forest,
under the supervision of the Oregon Department of Forestry.
Coverage: Nicolai anchors
the Southeast corner of
our service area, covering the Logview-Kelso area,
and north along Interstate 5
to at least the Highway 12 interchange,
well into the overlap area with the
Olympia repeater. The Nicolai repeater is usable
along WA Hwy 4, from Longview, to
Cathlamet and westward, where it
overlaps the coverage of our other repeaters. The repeater
is usable on Highway 53 in the Nehalem River Valley,
into Nehalem, Wheeler and Manzanita. Parts of Highway
26 are covered, and it can be
used in the Portland/Vancouver area, as well as
east up the Columbia
Gorge, if you pick your spot carefully.
Affiliated with the
BeachNet
system, the Nicolai repeater is owned by K7GA, the EC/RO for
ARES/RACES in Wahkiakum County. It is primarily intended to provide
emergency communications in Wahkiakum County and the rest of
ARES/RACES District Four (Wahkiakum, Cowlitz, Clark and
Skamania Counties). During emergency situations, the Nicolai
repeater will most likely be taken off the network for
use by District Four.
Originally, there was a wooden forestry lookout tower
on the site. In the mid 1980's, this structure (encrusted in
antennas and feedlines) had fallen into disrepair, and was
rickety enough to be condemned. All the users were given
one year to remove their antennas. The State Forestry Department
erected a steel tower, and rented space on it. Several tenants
provided their own poles to avoid paying for tower space.
The left-most picture
below shows this time period. The old lookout tower is now long
gone, except for the concrete leg bases. The rest of the pictured
towers and poles are still in use.
Hardware: The repeater
consists of a
GE Mastr-II 110-watt continuous duty
base station (running 40-watts),
with an Arcom RC-210 controller in a
44-inch GE cabinet.
The duplexer is a Decibel
Products 4-cavity
bandpass-notch type feeding a
9 dBd omni vertical
antenna through 50 feet
of double-shielded coaxial cable.
There is a UHF GE Rangr mobile
used as a link transceiver, with
a 6-element Yagi antenna.
The packet station uses
a VHF Kenwood radio, with a VHF
bandpass cavity. It feeds
a 3 dBi vertical on a pole
next to the building. There
are plans to move it to the
tower in the summer of 2013.
Station Power:
The commercial power
line to the site
failed in 2010. Clatsop County
picked up the slack with their
diesel generator until December,
2011, when they shut off the
juice, removed the generator
and abandoned their
building.
Our landlords (fortunately)
decided to stay,
and
we installed a 5 kW generator
(propane) in the building.
We worked out a remote control
system to allow us to operate
the generator remotely,
using the UHF repeater. This
charges a 1700-AmpHour battery
bank through two 80-Amp chargers.
The load consists of our UHF
and 6-meter repeaters, packet
station and four commercial
repeaters.
The Clatsop County (Oregon)
Sunset Empire ARC operates the
146.76 repeater out of the abandoned
Clatsop County building. They also
have a battery bank. Whenever
our generator is running, it also powers
a 120 VAC line to their building to
charge their batteries. Since they
are only supporting a single repeater,
their battery always gets sufficient charge.
Packet Radio:
The "NICOLI"
packet
radio node is located on this site.
This
is part of the 145.630
MHz 1200-Baud Washington
Coastal EOC Packet Network.
This node is primarily intended
to extend the range of the K7GA-10
Winlink2000 RMS station in
Cathlamet. It is able to connect
with most of the Western
Washington nodes, including
"3SIS", which overlooks
Puget Sound. The packet station
also has a Telemetry
beacon (every half-hour when
activated) that reports
the battery
voltage from the site.
Six-Meters:
Geoff also hosts a 6-meter
repeater from this same
site. Although not part
of
BeachNet,
the K7GA
52.810 (-1.7 offset,
100.0 Hz PL) repeater
is linked to three other
six-meter machines
to the north, one on
"BawFaw"
another North Mountain,
near Shelton, WA, and
the third in Hoquiam, WA,
for excellent Western
Washington coverage.
The pair of large
folded dipoles on the
right (east) side of the tower
in the picture (below,
right) serve this
repeater well.
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