Cannon Mountain UHF Amateur Radio Repeater

CANNON MOUNTAIN

WA1ZYX/R CANNON 449.875 - 123.0 PL
Cannon Mtn
Tramway Base Lodge

WA1ZYX/R - Cannon Mountain 449.875 123.0 PL The Cannon Mountain UHF Repeater went on the air in the fall of 1990. It is located on the very summit of the mountain at the head of Franconia Notch, which is also the home of the Famous Old Man of the Mountain and the "Arial Tramway" at an elevation of about 4380 feet AMSL- give or take a couple inches..... From this location, the repeater will provide fantastic Hand-Held coverage to the Franconia, Lincoln, Littleton and Plymouth areas. It also will cover areas ranging from Montreal to Boston. It also covers North and South along I-93 just fine. I've worked the Repeater with a portable from downtown Manchester - a good couple hours drive time away. Photo of
Rptr

The Repeater equipment consists of an Icom RP-3010 UHF repeater driving an outboard Mirage D-1010 Power Amp. The repeater is putting out almost 60 watts. I'm also running a GLB preselector/preamp, more to keep the front end narrow than to perk up the Icom's hearing. There is an Astron power supply running the amps as the repeater itself is self powered.
The repeater is controlled by an S-COM 5K repeater controller. I yanked out the original Icom controller and put the S-Com in it's place right in the repeaters cabinet. This keeps the actual amount of physical room needed for equipment and rack space to minimum. Plus the 5K is much more flexable and reliable.
We then feed a set of Wacom Duplexers, about 40 feet of Andrews 1/2 inch Heliax to a DB-404 folded dipole antenna which is top mounted on one of the microwave towers up there. This antenna went in service in Sept of '98 after to replace a stationmaster that didn't fair too well during the previous winter. This would make this the 4th antenna replacement. New Antenna

The antennas take quite a beating up there, in fact, it's not uncommon to have winds in excess of 100 MPH!! Given that plus several inches of Rime Ice, makes for quite an amount of stress on any antenna up there. I've actually seen in excess of 4 inches of rime ice built up on everything exposed on the summit. It's quite a sight!!
The picture at this link shows the summit of Cannon from across the Notch, as taken from Mt Lafayette. The repeater is located right on the top there.
Go to this page if you're interested in looking at some other pictures of the Summit of Cannon Mountain and the UHF repeater equipment.

Linking up to Cannon is done as a "user" with a UHF remote base at the Keene repeater site using a beam looking up North. The linking is only part-time, however, it can be remotely controlled from the Cannon Repeater.
*As long as the remote base in Keene is listening to the Cannon Frequency and not being used on another frequency at the time the request is made.*
The Cannon Repeater had to undergo a frequency change in April of 1992. This is because after the Repeater went on the air, somebody in Montreal decided to set one up on the same frequency pair - except reversed. Good thing I ran full time PL, but you can just imagine the howling they used to do when the two repeaters would "talk" to each other! Anyway, life has been good on this frequency ever since!

Tower during Winter


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