Welcome to the Central Kansas Repeater Group.
Of the 4 area repeaters that CKRG owns and operates are Yaesu System Fusion (or C4FM) analog/digital repeaters.
Our main city System Fusion and 1st repeater is on 444.100 + 100.0 Hz. This repeater is located at our High Rise site and the antenna is mounted on the 150' tall building. This repeater covers the entire Great Bend metro area. Our repeater has a 12v battery backup system. At this time host a Echolink Node, weather radio and a weather camera over looking Great Bend.
A 2nd System Fusion repeater and 2nd site is on the 146.835 +100.0Hz frequency pair and is located north of Pawnee Rock Ks, on a 356’ Heartland Tower. Our 3rd repeater is also located on this tower. 444.325 +100.0Hz. This site is backed up with a Automatic Standby Generator.
The 4th System Fusion repeater and 3rd site operates on 444.925 + 100.0Hz. Located between Hoisington and Beaver KS. This tower is also a Heartland Tower and is a host of a K-Link repeater on the K-Link repeater system. This site is backed up with a Automatic Standby Generator.
All three sites are equipped with the 'second generation' System Fusion repeaters and operate in AMS, or Auto Mode Select. This allows the repeaters receiver to auto select FM or Digital and then retransmits the same mode, depending on the received signal. Site two and three are equipped with a S-Com 7330 Repeater Controller.
These repeaters are open to all users, Analog FM or C4FM Digital.
Current Analog FM users will not be affected and can use as normal.
If analog only users don't wish to hear the digital data stream over their rigs speaker, the FM user may wish to program their radios with full CTCSS (encode and decode) to help alleviate unwanted noise. Employing full CTCSS will allow any analogue user to mask the digital data as is passes over your receiver.
If you don't program your rig to full CTCSS and you happen to turn on your rigs scanning function, any digital traffic that comes across will lock on the channel and all you will hear is a very loud white noise, which can be annoying. The actual C4FM signal sounds like a starts/stop tones, followed by a very loud white noise hiss until the digital user unkeys. With full decode on, your rigs scan feature should fly right past, unless there's a FM conversation occurring.
It should be noted that both the analog FM and Digital user will be co-sharing the four repeater pairs, but only ONE conversation can exist on the repeater pair at one time. If you hear a digital noise on the channel, and your S meter is showing a strong, yet unintelligible signal AND you wish to break in or make an emergency call, keying up in between their transmissions with any analog transmission will automatically force everyone's Digital radios (including the repeater) back to Analog FM mode
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