Portland Internet Radio
Group ~ N7PIR
Portland Internet Radio
Group ~ N7PIR
The N7PIR Repeater is owned by Mike Steiner. He was also the owner of the KE6WUK on Sunset Ridge in Southern California. Mike was promoted, and had to move to Portland, Oregon. Knowing that 30-40 hams call the KE6WUK Repeater their home, he decided to leave the repeater. However he wanted to still be in contact with the repeater somehow; and someone said "What about IRLP?" So within a few months of moving to Portland, Mike and had back then, KD6LVP repeater, on the air (low-level). A few weeks later on October 28th, 2001, Mike had the IRLP node up and running. Oregon's 2nd IRLP node (Oregon's 1st continuously available IRLP Node) and close to the 300th node involved in IRLP (Internet Radio Linking Project).
After having the KD6LVP Repeater and the IRLP both up and running, Mike started to receive calls over IRLP from hams all over the world attempting to reach other hams in the Portland-Vancouver area. One ham Mike Flud WU7Q was trying to reach Kent Randles K7YXZ. K7QDX advised WU7Q that the repeater was low-level and had never heard Kent on the repeater. Mike K7QDX finally had a enough of it and started looking for a better site for his repeater.
After about 6 months being on the air Mike was able to get into a site with some help of some other hams. The repeater was moved and installed at what is commonly known as the K-GON Tower (Picture to the left) in the West Hills. (Click on 'Pictures' on the top to see more of the site)
A few months later the repeater formed a group, Portland Internet Radio Group. On October 29, 2002 (a day after the node's 1 year old birthday) the call sign of the repeater was changed from KD6LVP (Mike's formal callsign) to the group's call N7PIR.
On October 16, 2005 443.700 repeater was installed on Goat Mountain (Picture to the Right) with the help of Rob Hoeye KD7OFU, John Moore KD7JWZ, Kevin Novak K7KCN. This site was picked to improve coverage to the south and east part of the Willamette Valley where 440.450 repeater was failing to cover.
August 1st, 2009 the 440.450 repeater was moved to the Skyline Towers in the West Hills. Due to some limitations that were starting at the KGON Tower a decision was made to move the repeater. With moving the repeater it over came the limitations along with providing better coverage to the north in Vancouver, and to the west towards the Coastal Range.
The 440.450 Repeater uses a Motorola MSF5000 UHF Repeater (100 Watt Version). A
new SCOM 7330 Controller which gives the Voice Ids, Hang-time, and Courtesy Tones to name a few things. A set of db-420 UHF antennas (Community combined) gives the repeater the ears and mouth of the system. The Site elevation is 1,123 feet / 342.3 meters on a 820 foot / 250.2 meters tower.The 443.700 Repeater uses a Motorola MSF5000 UHF Repeater (40 Watt Version). A new SCOM 7330 Controller is the brains of the repeater. The Site elevation is 4,229 feet / 1,289 meters on a 150 feet / 46 meters tower.
The 443.875 Repeater in Seaside uses a Motorola MSF5000 UHF Repeater (100 Watt Version).
The Computer is a 400 MHz. AMD K-6, 128 Megabytes RAM, 2 Gig Maxtor
HD, Sound Blaster AWE 16. The internet connection is through Comcast
Cable. The Current
Operating System is Linux Red Hat 9.
Coverage of 440.4500 MHz. Repeater:
Coverage of 443.7000 MHz. Repeater:
