South Bend
Pacific County, WA
46.707558, -123.769484
1300 Feet
Call: NM7R
147.340 +600kHz 82.5Hz
South Bend VHF Repeater
Note the 82.5 Hz CTCSS (PL)
Tone on the 147.340 repeater
On 05/26/17 The repeater
receiver was repaired,
restoring normal sensitivity.
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Location: The South Bend repeaters are on
1300-foot high
Holy Cross Mountain
between South Bend and Raymond, WA., with the several towers on
the hill visible from nearly any place in either city.
There is an unobstructed line-of-sight path from
the Pacific County Courthouse, where the Emergency Operations Center
(EOC) is located. The Courthouse and EOC
are surrounded by high ground on the other 3 sides,
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 repeater platform. Follow these
links for information on the co-located
224.820 MHz and 442.675 MHz
repeaters.
Coverage:
The "Holy Cross"
repeaters
can be used from most of the
Long Beach Peninsula,
south from South Bend on Highway
101 beyond Bay Center,
west on Highway 105 to Tokeland, Grayland
and Westport, east
throughout the Willapa
Valley and on Highway
6, all the way
to the eastern county line.
The coverage follows Highway 101
north beyond
the Pacific/Grays Harbor County
line.
The relatively low output
power (about 10-watts) on
the 147.340 machine
is a condition of
coordination, required to limit range
in the direction of our co-channel
neighbor in Puget
Sound.
Even at low power output,
this repeater
does quite well, within its
intended coverage area.
The 147.340 "Holy Cross"
repeater normally operates in parallel with
the 442.675 MHz machine,
coupled together as a single, dual-band, resource, and
linked to
BeachNet.
In fact, with careful radio adjustments, it is possible to
operate full-duplex (talk and listen at the same time,
like a telephone) between two Amateurs equipped
with dual-band transceivers. If attempting this,
we remind you that you must still drop your transmitter at least
once every 3-minutes to avoid timing out the repeater, and to let
another Ham join in if they want to.
When desired, we can
un-link them, providing separate
repeaters for different jobs. The
network link can be tied to
either, or neither. This
flexible functionality
supports the Pacific County
Emergency Management Agency,
providing intra-county
and extra-county back-up
emergency
communications.
Hardware: The
147.340 MHz
repeater is
a GE Mastr-II
continuous duty base station.
The repeater transmitter
uses a PLL-type
exciter and a 40-watt
continuous duty amplifier
set to run about 20-watts.
The receiver has a built-in
GE UHS tunable preamplifier and
uses a GE programmable CTCSS
decoder.
The VHF cabinet holds (left
picture below, 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 (second
picture from the left)
holds the UHF repeater
and duplexer.
The VHF repeater transmitter
uses (second picture from the right)
a circulator,
and band-pass cavity,
while the receiver
has a
bandpass cavity,
PAR notch filter,
and DCI band-pass filter
to suppress paging and
FM broadcast signals
from the adjacent building.
The VHF repeater uses a
Sinclair 4-cavity BpBr Duplexer.
The two repeaters
share the single power supply,
controller and
(picture below on right)
Hustler G6-270 antenna
at 80-feet up the 140-foot tower, fed
with LMR-600.
The Link-Comm controller
manages both repeaters, the
link transceiver, and a Mastr-II
auxiliary control receiver.
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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