Naselle
Pacific County, WA
46.421470, -123.798741
2000 Feet
Call: NM7R
440.675 +5MHz 118.8Hz
Naselle UHF Repeater
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Location: The Naselle repeater is located on Naselle Ridge,
also called "Radar Ridge", overlooking
the town of Naselle, WA. at an abandoned 1950's "SAGE" radar base.
The logging road is good enough for a
regular car (4-wheel drive not necessary) most of the year, although
snow can close access in the winter months. The turn from Hwy 4 at the
Youth Camp is the gravel road that goes up the hill to the left. Be ready
to pull over for logging trucks.
Coverage: Naselle provides good access for
BeachNet
users in southern Pacific County, with the generous range you would expect from
a 2000-foot elevation. It covers areas of the county that would otherwise
be isolated from the network, including Naselle itself.
It also provides
valuable coverage to the east, in the Deep River area and western Wahkiakum
County. To the north, the Naselle repeater covers the Nemah area, including
Highway 101 from the Naselle River to Bay Center, and the timberlands east
of the highway. The station can be worked from most parts of
the Long Beach Peninsula, and the Tokeland area. Coverage extends
south into Clatsop and Columbia Counties, in Oregon.
Hardware: The repeater consists of
a GE
Mastr-II 110-watt continuous duty
base station (running 60-watts) with
a dual-section isolator and DCI bandpass filter.
The duplexer is a 4-cavity
Sinclair BpBr type feeding a Comet
X-510 dual band antenna (inside a Stationmaster
shell) at the top of the tower,
through 100 feet of LDF5-50
7/8-inch hardline.
The main antenna is shared with
two
remote VHF
receivers, one supporting the
North Cove 145.310 repeater and the
other part of the Megler VHF voting
receiver system to enhance VHF coverage
into otherwise shadowed areas.
While the siting
and coordination of high-level
2-meter repeaters has become quite difficult
as the band has filled up, there are few
such restrictions on remote receivers.
The repeater incorporates
an ACC RC-96 controller and a
Mastr-II power supply. There is a dedicated
GE
Mastr-II control receiver for the repeater.
Linking: The frequency-agile
remote base uses an
ACC FC-900 interface and incorporates
a stack of Icom
transceivers for the 140,
220 and 440-MHz bands, sharing a CX-333 tri-band
antenna (half-way up the tower)
fed with half-inch hardline. In addition to
providing the day-to-day
linking of this repeater to the network,
the remote base is capable of linking to many
repeaters in the Longview and Portland areas,
as well as up and down the coast, making it
a cornerstone of the
ARES/RACES Emergency Response Plan
for Pacific County.
Construction Note: While most Amateur repeaters
can take years to become a reality, this was a case where having
a well-stocked spare parts locker accelerated the process
considerably. An offhand comment by an acquaintance
led me to believe
a billet at this site might be possible. This required soliciting
permission from the site owner, including attending a meeting
of their governing board to formally ask permission.
Obtaining the cooperation of
Pacific County Emergency Management Agency and it's oversight
Council required attending another meeting.
It meant assembling, fabricating and testing the
station components in my shop, followed by installing the
equipment at the site, including the tower work to hang the antennas.
On the paperwork front, there was
finding a likely frequency pair,
negotiating with the co-channel neighbors by email for
letters giving conditional permission to share their pair
for testing, and filing with WWARA toward repeater
coordination and permission to build and test.
All this was accomplished (from twinkle-in-the-eye to
finished working repeater) within three weeks,
the time it took for the four custom-fabricated crystals
to arrive.
This repeater filled the last remaining "hole" in
the Pacific County coverage. On the air 28 July 2005.
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