North Cove
Pacific County, WA
46.734566, -124.047403
550 Feet
Call: NM7R
145.310 -600kHz 118.8Hz
444.400 +5MHz 118.8Hz
North Cove VHF Repeater
North Cove UHF Repeater
As of 02/23/13 the North Cove
repeaters are down.
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Location: The North Cove site is on the ocean bluff,
overlooking North Cove, near
Tokeland/Grayland, WA, above "Washaway Beach" on the north side of
the mouth of Willapa Bay. The tower is visible on the headlands
driving south-east bound on Highway 105, after making the turn to the east,
about 3 or 4 miles west of the Tokeland turnoff.
Coverage: The two North Cove repeaters can be easily
accessed north to
Westport, WA, and south along the ocean side of the Long
Beach Peninsula, especially the beach area. The coverage
to the east overlaps with that from the South Bend, Naselle and Megler
repeaters. The North Cove repeaters can be useful along
Highway 101, especially the VHF repeater, which has a
Remote Receiver at the Naselle site
providing very good coverage from Bay Center, south along Highway
101 to the Highway 4 junction at "Johnson's Landing".
To use this high-level receiver, shift your CTCSS (PL) tone
from the usual 118.8 Hz to 114.8 Hz and your transmissions
will be picked up loud and clear in this area.
The North Cove VHF machine was the first
BeachNet
repeater. The original unit had been the W7RDR repeater from Ilwaco,
purchased new before 1980.
After that club had switched to a Motorola rig, in the mid-1990's,
the station became available and went on the air from North Cove, on the
Western Washington Shared Non-Protected (SNP) test pair of 145.290. At
the time, it was linked to the 146.660 W7FBM repeater in Astoria.
Later the frequency
was changed to its permanent pair, 145.310. In 2010,
after more than a decade of continuous faithful
service in support of Amateur radio,
that
particular unit was replaced with a duplicate model, and the original
completely refurbished for return to the Pacific County ARC.
The 2-meter repeater
is normally linked to
BeachNet,
and like all of our repeaters, the link can be dropped to make this
repeater stand-alone when that is desirable.
The UHF machine normally operates stand-alone,
providing a local-use alternative with better range than simplex to
"talk around the corner", without using the entire network,
but the 444.400 repeater can be linked to the rest of the network
when desired.
Hardware: The VHF repeater consists
of a GE Mastr-II base station.
The VHF
duplexer is a Sinclair Hybrid-Ring unit, originally used at
the 146.760 repeater in Oregon. Mice had chewed the cable harness,
destroying the device, and the Sunset Empire club had sold this
as surplus. With a careful replacement of the harness,
this unit once again performs well. The VHF repeater incorporates
a CAT-200B controller and runs 40-watts
to a Hustler G6-270 dual band antenna at 130-feet up the tower,
fed with LMR-600 coax cable.
The UHF station uses
a GE Mastr-II mobile,
duplex converted, running
30-watts. The duplexer is a Motorola four-can bandpass type, and the
repeater shares the Hustler dual-band antenna and feedline
through a diplexer. the UHF repeater uses an NHRC4-M2 controller.
The two stations have independent power supplies and link systems.
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