Grays River
Wahkiakum County, WA
46.344024, -123.503966
970 Feet
Call: NM7R
147.020 +600kHz 118.8Hz
Grays River VHF Repeater
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Location: The Grays River repeater is located near the crest of KM Hill
about half-way between Naselle, WA, and Cathlamet, WA, on Highway 4 in
Wahkiakum County. KM Hill is the highest point on Highway 4 between
Longview, WA and the Coast, dividing the county roughly in half.
Coverage: Also called the "KM Hill" or just
"KM" repeater, it provides
coverage to nearly all of Wahkiakum County, and west along Hwy 4
into Naselle.
On the Oregon side of the Columbia River, it fills in coverage along
Highway 30 between Bradley Summit and Clatskanie, OR.
Remote
Receiver: There
is (as of May, 2010) a
remote receiver in the
vicinity of Cathlamet, WA, to
provide hand-held
coverage in this
city. Shifting your
PL tone to 110.9 Hz
allows your
signal to be picked up
on the local receiver and
relayed into the network.
Using the 118.8 Hz PL tone
routes your signal through the
main repeater receiver
at the KM Hill site.
For more information
on the Cathlamet receiver,
Click here.
Normally linked to the rest of
BeachNet,
this machine can be separated to operate stand-alone
or linked to the 444.500 Nicolai repeater, as desired
for ARES/RACES operations in Wahkiakum County. It provides a link
to the State ECC at Camp Murray, through the network, and acts as
a focus for Emergency Communications in this rural county.
There is no
generator power at the site, so the back-up is provided in the
form of two deep-cycle 90-AH batteries. The repeater announces
when it is operating on emergency power to advise users, and
automatically reduces the repeater output power by about 6dB to
conserve the batteries. If desired, a
control operator can remotely
switch between high and low power as the situation warrants.
Hardware: The
repeater consists of a GE Mastr-II
110-watt continuous-duty
base station. The transmitter
signal passes through one
BpBr cavity and a bandpass
cavity, and then
feeds a Diamond dual-band
antenna at the 65-foot level
on the tower
which serves the transmitter
and the UHF link. This antenna is
fed with LDF4-50, half-inch
hardline. The receive antenna is a
high-gain Stationmaster at
the top of the 90-foot tower, fed
with LDF5-50 7/8-inch hardline,
with a single BpBr cavity.
The two-antenna system allows
optimal receiver performance
with less than 1 dB combined loss.
If you can hear this repeater,
you can probably work it.
Packet Radio: The
"KMHILL" 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.
The purpose of this node is to provide a link between the western portion of
the county and the county seat in the eastern part.
Web Cam: for a look
at the road conditions on Hwy 4,
right outside the turn off to
the site access road,
Click Here for the WSDOT traffic cam.
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