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All
officers serve through December 31 of the calendar year.


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Brian Gray, KD4FUN
President
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Van Manuel, KN4YCK
Secretary |

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Ken Zeileck, KT4V
Treasurer
ARRL VEC
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History
of the Carteret County Amateur Radio Society and the
K4GRW 145.450 MHz repeater
Our repeater is
owned and maintained by Bob
Chambers (K4GRW) and is located on the
360-foot tower located in Morehead City near Walmart. The
antenna
is a CommScope DB-224, four-element vertical array dipole.
One element is
aimed
Down East, one aimed out to sea, one aimed westward along the
coastline, and the other aimed up 70 Hwy towards New Bern.
Our
goal was to cover as much of Carteret County as possible.
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The
K4GRW repeater transmitter is capable of 100 watts output but we
normally run at 40 watts. There is a 100 Hertz Continuous
Tone-Coded Squelch System (CTCSS) tone required for the repeater
receiver to hear any transmitter using the system. We in no way
attempted to keep the repeater “private”, it is freely open for any and
all licensed Hams to enjoy and use 24/7. We initially did not
require a CTCSS tone, and didn’t for a long time, but we had so much
interference from the commercial fishermen using illegal radios and
picking random frequencies to operate on that we had no choice but to
require a CTCSS tone for the repeater.
Some may wonder why the repeater is called the “Newport repeater” when
it is actually located in Morehead City. Well, about 45 years
ago, Bob was working at Cherry
Point MCAS
as a civilian tech rep. There were a number of Hams working in
and around his office, including several Marines. At that time
the only area repeater was the Grifton repeater (146.685) that Danny
Hampton had installed. There were rumors that the New Bern
Amateur Radio Club wanted to install a 2-meter amateur radio repeater
but the project was stalled in club politics. So Bob, two
civilians, and two Marines (Mark Bitterlich WA3JPY and Ed Craig WB4PTP)
decided they would offer technical help to the New Bern Club.
After the dust settled, Bob had volunteered to build the new repeater
for the New Bern Amateur Radio Club. One of the New Bern Club
members had a salvaged General Electric Master Pro commercial repeater,
so Bob and his team started out with that as a nucleus.
Next, they needed to build the control circuit cards, the phone patch
and dialer (there were no cell phones or Internet back then), the audio
interface card, CW ID, timers, squelch, and time-out timers.
After the repeater was ready to go, the team convinced the New Bern
Club to opt for a six-cavity duplexer that cost about $800 at the time,
a commercial four-element antenna ($600), and hardline ($2 per
foot). Now they needed a tower. Mr. Sid Purvis was a
Ham and New Bern Amateur Radio Club member, and a friend of the manager
of Weyerhaeuser Paper Company. Sid managed to to get permission
to install the new antenna and repeater system on one of Weyerhaeuser’s
towers located in Riverdale near James City. So Mark and Ed
climbed the 300-foot tower and installed the new antenna array.
The New Bern Club insisted that two of the elements point towards
Jacksonville, one point towards New Bern, and one point north up the
Hwy 17 corridor, so there was little coverage for Havelock and Carteret
County. The new repeater worked great, in the directions the
antenna elements were pointing.
After a few years of working with the New Bern Amateur Radio Clubs
146.61 repeater, Ham activity in Carteret County on the 2-meter
portable and other mobile Ham bands increased and there was more
interest in Amateur Radio in the Down East area. The New Bern Clubs
146.61 repeater coverage in Carteret County was “spotty” at best with
hardly any coverage beyond Morehead City. The New Bern Club was
not interested in turning one of their antenna elements towards
Morehead City, so Bob Chambers and his team of four volunteers began
looking for a new location in Carteret County to install another
repeater. One day, Bob was speaking to Art Gill about the teams
plans and their problems securing a suitable location for a new
repeater. Art owned AnserQuick Communications Co. in Morehead
City. He donated a General Electric Master Pro repeater, and Bob
modified it to work on the Ham radio bands, then he built the control
interface circuits just like he did for the New Bern Amateur Radio
Club. The team members pitched in $200 each and purchased yet
another six-cavity duplexer. Art donated a surplus
four-element VHF antenna and Mark donated the hardline. The
team assembled all this stuff together and had a working repeater, but
had nowhere to install it. Art’s 360-foot tower on Little
Nine Road in Morehead City didn’t exist at the time, and his other
tower was full. By this time, Bob was working at the Town of
Newport and got permission from the Newport water department
commissioner to install the antenna on top of the towns water tower,
125 feet in height. By this time, the team was beginning to get a
lot of interest from local Hams and the Carteret County Amateur Radio
Society was becoming active again. Mark and Bob climbed the
town’s water tower and installed the antenna. The repeater worked
well, but did not have a very good range, but at least Havelock,
Beaufort, Morehead City, and Atlantic Beach areas had
coverage. There was still no cellular service in the area,
so Bob had a residential phone line installed for the repeater and paid
for the cost of the phone line himself. After a few years,
Keith Godwin took over the cost of the phone line until the Carteret
County Amateur Radio Society picked up the cost of the auto patch
several years later. Eventually cellular service came to the Down
East area, eliminating the need for the phone patch and landline.
Eventually the “Newport repeater" was relocated to the 500-hundred foot
TV tower on 70 Hwy in Newport owned by Time Warner Cable. Bob and Ed
did the installation. Ed climbed the 500-foot tower and installed
the antenna, and Art offered to allow the “Newport repeater” to share
his pager company’s antenna system. His antenna was
designed for 157 MHz service, so the SWR was 3:1. Otherwise, it
worked great and there was 2-meter Ham radio coverage for most of
Carteret County and much of Craven County. It was a feat how the
team made the repeater and the 300-watt paging transmitter share the
same antenna. Bob solved the problem by using a coaxial “T”
fitting, then he tuned the stub coax cable from the paging transmitter
to the antenna, then he used a coaxial tuned “stub” between the “T” and
the repeaters 6-cavity duplexer. Danny Hampton, who was known as
“Mr. Communications” in Raleigh, NC called Bob to give a favorable
signal report. So for many years, the repeater operated
efficiently from the 500-foot Time Warner Cable TV Tower in
Newport. Eventually, Art terminated his paging system contract
with Time Warner, so the repeater had to shut down. With no place
to relocate the “Newport repeater", the Carteret County Amateur Radio
Society put the repeater in storage.
During the time that the Carteret County
Amateur Radio Society’s
repeater was in storage, Mark (WA3JPY) was busy installing “Packet
Digi-peaters” in Pamlico and Craven County and he needed some
duplexers. He inquired if Bob would donate his 1/4 share of the
new duplexer to him, and Bob agreed. A couple of years
later, Art completed the construction of a 360-foot tower on Little
Nine Road in Morehead City in the Wildwood community beside
Walmart. Robert McNeal (W4MBD), Craig Willis, and Charley Brown
(K4VIR) contacted Bob and asked if he would re-install the “Newport
repeater” on Arts new 360-foot tower by Walmart if they raised enough
funds from local Hams to purchase a new set of duplexers and assist him
with whatever he needed to get the repeater back on the air.
However, a subsequent inspection of the old GE Master Pro repeater in
storage revealed that it was not worth the cost and labor to refurbish,
so Art donated a surplus General Electric Master III repeater that was
all solid state and in good condition. After some modifications
and re-tuning, Bob and his team got the transceiver working
efficiently. But the old repeater control system was obsolete, so
Bob purchased a commercial-grade, CAT 250 Controller with all the bells
and whistles. Once again, the new repeater was working
well. The team then bought a commercial grade 4-element, 2-meter
antenna array and tuned it to 145.450 MHz and Art donated the
hardline. With the help of Art Gill, Robert McNeil, and others,
the team was able to get the Newport repeater back on the
air. It was several years later that the City of Morehead
expanded, which put the “Newport repeater” inside the city limits of
Morehead City.
73
de
Bob Chambers, K4GRW
September
2nd, 2020
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K4GRW
Newport Repeater
Downlink 145.450 MHz, Uplink 144.850 MHz
CTCSS Uplink Tone 100 Hz, Offset -0.6 MHz
Carteret
County Emergency Net: first, second, and third
Tuesdays at 19:30 hrs.
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