South Bend
Pacific County, WA
46.707558, -123.769484
1300 Feet
Call: NM7R
147.340 +600kHz 118.8Hz
442.675 +5MHz 118.8Hz
South Bend VHF Repeater
South Bend UHF Repeater
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Location: The South Bend station is on Holy Cross Mountain
between South Bend and Raymond, WA. The site is line-of-sight from
the Pacific County Courthouse, where the Emergency Operating Center
is located. The Courthouse and EOC are surrounded by higher ground,
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 platform for a repeater.
Coverage: The "Holy Cross" repeaters
can be used on the
northern third of the Long Beach Peninsula, south on Highway
101 beyond Bay Center,
west to Tokeland, east throughout the Menlo Valley and on Hwy
6, all the way
to the eastern county line. The coverage follows Hwy 101
north to
the Pacific/Grays Harbor County
line. VHF and UHF coverage are similar. The low output power on the 147.340 machine
is required to limit range in the direction of our co-channel neighbor in Puget
Sound, a condition of coordination. Even at low power output, these repeaters
do quite well, within their intended coverage area.
These two "Holy Cross" repeaters normally operate in parallel,
linked together as a single, dual-band, resource, and
linked to
BeachNet.
When desired, we can
split the two apart, providing separate repeaters for different jobs. The
network link can be tied to either, or neither. This flexibility
supports the Pacific County Emergency Operations Center at the
Court House in South Bend, allowing county-wide communications.
Hardware: Both repeaters are GE Mastr-II continuous duty base stations
in separate cabinets. The VHF repeater is a 40-watt unit running about 12-watts, while
the UHF repeater is a 100-watt unit running 40-watts. The VHF cabinet holds (top to bottom), the
control receiver, controller, VHF repeater and power supply, with
the Mastr-II mobile-style link radio on the side of the cabinet.
The UHF cabinet
holds the UHF repeater and duplexer.
The two repeaters share a power supply,
controller and a Hustler G6-270 antenna
at 80-feet up the 140-foot tower, fed
with LMR-600. The VHF repeater uses a circulator, and
has a PAR filter and DCI filter to suppress a nearby paging signal.
The Link controller manages both repeaters, a
link transceiver, and a Mastr-II auxiliary control receiver.
The UHF repeater uses a Wacom BpBr four-cavity duplexer, while the VHF
station has a Sinclair model.
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.
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