• History:

In January and February 2000 about a half-dozen hams from the St. Petersburg area bought Icom IC-T81A handhelds.   This handheld is a four-band HT (6 meters, 2 meters, 70cm and 23cm.)   We often hung out on one of the several 70cm repeaters in town.  

So we all had these new radios with 23cm.    There already was a 23cm repeater in town, owned by Buddy, WB4OMG (1285.000/1273.000 103.5Hz CTCSS.)   

I don't know who came up with the idea of building another repeater on 23cm.   Anyway, over a few beers (or other various drinks) a few of us decided to go for it.

Our repeater guru did some homework.   He decided that he didn't want to mess with transverters, and such things.   So he went out and ordered a pair of Kenwood TM-541 mobile rigs.   Then he ordered a Comet GP-21 mono-band antenna.   He then checked out what the options were for duplexers and soon found that 23cm cans cost quite a bit of money ($900 was just too much!)  So he dug around his stash of stuff -- and after putting several different UHF duplexers through some tests with test equipment he found one that would tune up at 3/4 wavelength and that would provide the necessary isolation between the transmit and receiver frequencies.   Then after rounding of a power supply, some coax, a toner decoder and putting together an IDer and COR circuit we had all the pieces needed.  

He then tallied the cost of all the parts.   By this time there were eight of us who were "in."   So he divided the total by eight and we all paid our part.

The trustee of the repeater is KE4CGL but that's only because when our repeater guru programmed the IDer he just drew straws to decide what callsign to program.   

In March 2000 the repeater was built and put on the air at its current location northwest of downtown St. Petersburg.

There was a early problem, it seemed RF from the transmitter was messing up the squelch circuit on the receiver.   The two TM-541 radios had been placed next to each other and when the two radios were moved farther apart that problem went away.

• Ownership:

The repeater is owned by the eight hams who put up the money.   No club or any organization exists to support it.   We're just a bunch of hams who like to shoot the breeze and have some fun.  

The One Two Nine One'ers are:   (In no particular order.)

KE4CGL    KF4DDY    W4ABC    W4BNC    KA9RIX    K4ACE    K4LK    N4PK

• Can I use 1291.0?

Well we've never told anyone to go away... In fact its listed in the repeater directory as an open repeater!   I think you'd have to do something awfully crummy to get the boot anyway....

• Technical:

• Contact Information:

Email to Paul, N4PK

• Other 23cm repeater systems on the net:

Florida Repeater Council 23cm Repeater Listing

California 23cm Repeater Listing

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