North Cove
Pacific County, WA
46.734566, -124.047403
550 Feet
Call: NM7R
444.400 +5MHz 118.8Hz
North Cove UHF Repeater
The North Cove UHF
repeater was refurbished
with minor improvements,
August 2015 upgrading the
antenna, feedline, chassis,
RF deck and linking radio.
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Location: The North Cove site is
on the ocean bluff,
overlooking North Cove, WA, 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. This web-page covers the UHF
repeater installation at this site. For information regarding the VHF repeater
that shares this site, please follow this link.
Coverage: The North
Cove 70-centimeter repeater can be easily
accessed north along State Route 105 to
Westport, WA, and south along the ocean side of the Long
Beach Peninsula, especially the beach area.
Looking due south from
the repeater site, the tip of the Long Beach Peninsula
is only six miles away, with the repeater looking down the
ocean beach. The Surfside community is only 12 to 14 miles away.
The coverage
to the east overlaps with that from the 442.675 South Bend, and 440.675 Naselle
repeaters. The North Cove UHF repeater can be particularly useful
while driving along
Highway 101 on the eastern shore of Willapa Bay.
The over-water path to
most of Highway 101, from South Bend (Milepost 53) to
the Nemah area (Milepost 33) provides good coverage most of the way.
It is suggested that when south of
Milepost 34 (the so called "Nemah" area),
where the highway dives into the woods, the user switch to the Naselle 440.675
repeater,
which provides excellent coverage in this area, and is usable from the Bay
Center turnoff (Milepost 40), south along Highway
101 to the Highway 4 junction at "Johnson's Landing", and
for several miles east or west from there. If following Highway 101 on south, once out of range of the Naselle 440.675
repeater, the next UHF repeater to the south to look for is the 444.800, Long Beach repeater.
Linking: The 70-centimeter repeater
may be linked to
BeachNet,
but often is operated either stand-alone or linked to the IRLP net,
as a local option. If you find the repeater is not serving your needs due to
this, please look for
BeachNet,
on one of the other repeaters mentioned above.
There is generous overlap between the coverage
of our various repeaters, so having one unavailable
should not be a problem.
When the 444.400 MHz North Cove repeater is
linked to the IRLP Net, an
independent Internet-linked system, one will usually hear
out-of-area stations conversing. You are free to join
the conversation.
If you are traveling on Highway 101,
between Milepost 55 (in the South Bend area), and
Milepost 22
(the Willapa National Wildlife Refuge Headquarters)
you may hear this out-of-area conversation in progress on the
444.400 MHz North Cove repeater.
Once south of Milepost 22, or after turning onto Highway 4,
switching to the Megler IRLP
444.925 (82.5 PL)
repeater
will let you continue your conversation (or monitoring) south into
Oregon to well south of Seaside.
IRLP is an exciting way of bringing the flexibility of the internet
to repeater linking, allowing repeaters from all over the world to be
networked together.
More information here.
Hardware: The UHF station originally
used a
duplex converted
GE Mastr-II mobile.
There once were several of these in the
BeachNet
system, but over time they have all been replaced with
station chassis units, which have superior
performance in a number of ways.
The UHF repeater runs
40-watts to a Motorola four-cavity bandpass type duplexer,
sharing the feedline and dual-band antenna with the VHF station
through a diplexer. The Arcom RC-210 controller,
mounted inside the repeater chassis, manages the
UHF repeater and
GE-Rangr link radio, which uses a multi-element
UHF Yagi mounted low on the tower. The basic controls for this link
transceiver are mounted on a custom control card in the Mastr-II
station's card cage.
Other than the shared antenna and feedline,
the two repeaters operate independently with separate
power supplies, controllers and link systems.
History: The North Cove UHF machine was
added to the station in 2002 to provide a "local option" for
the ARES emergency response volunteers in this sparsely-populated
and rather remote community. While
BeachNet
provides a versatile tool for managing a county-wide or region-wide
emergency, there is still the need for a local repeater to provide
communications beyond simplex range. The control codes and
Control Operator authority is shared locally, so that this tool can
be as flexible as needed, when needed.
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