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Upcoming Events: June 7, Saturday - From 8 AM to 1 PM, the Weber County ARES and Weber County Sherriff's communications team will host the Ecomm 2008 Hamfest at the Browning Armory, 625 East, 5300 South in South Ogden. Admission will be $3.00 with half-tables available for $3.00 and full-tables for $6.00. Download their flyer for more information. June 28-29 - Every 4th weekend in June is ARRL Field Day! Many groups (perhaps a club club that you belong to) organize Field Day activities, so get involved! July 11-13 - This is the weekend of the Utah Hamfest at Ruby's Inn near Bryce Canyon. Also coincident will be the ARRL Rocky Mountain Division convention - go to the Utah Hamfest Website for more information. July 12 - If you aren't planning to go to the Utah Hamfest and you are a member of UARC, why not go to their annual Steak Fry? Go to UARC's web site for more info. Other news: "Why isn't the 'Snowbird' repeater back on the air yet???" In October 2007, an electrical transient
from an unknown source
destroyed a number of the chips (e.g. the CPU and most of the bus
transceivers) in the controller used on the Hidden Peak (a.k.a.
"Snowbird") repeater. John, K7JL, removed the controller from the
mountain for repair and several weeks later, the controller had been
repaired and was being bench-tested.
Why hasn't the repeater been put back on the air, yet? First, you must remember that the trip to the repeater site will occupy an entire day, so the work must either be done on a Saturday, or a vacation day must be taken - and most people are not willing to take a vacation day to go to a repeater site! Secondly, in the interest of time, practicality and safety, it is best to have at least two people along to aid with the "grunt work" of carrying gear and holding flashlights, not to mention safety. Finally, weather must be cooperative as the ONLY practical winter access to the site with the necessary test gear is via the tram. For the duration of the holiday season, time was extremely limited owing to understandable family obligations so there were no instances when the schedules of enough people allowed a trip to be taken. In the intervening months, there have been several attempts made to gain access to the site. In some cases, the trip had to be called off at the last minute because someone's schedule changed, but usually, it was due to weather: The tram cannot be run if the wind is too high and/or the weather is too bad. It should also be remembered that if the weather were to change while they were on-site doing the repair, the tram might be closed down, requiring everyone to leave their test equipment on-site and walk down the mountain! So, if you heard rumors about the 147.18 repeater having been up recently - or that it will not be put back online - then you can be assured that they are, in fact, rumors: It's just the mother nature has conspired against most of the recent attempts. If you wish to help with putting the repeater back online, feel free to contact John - but you should note the following: You will have to spend the entire day, you may need to leave for the mountain on short notice, and/or you may have to walk down the mountain if the weather suddenly changes and the tram closes! Levan Peak
repeater now online
This repeater is part of the Intermountain
Intertie - a system of linked repeaters that cover parts of Utah,
Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming and Arizona. Many of the repeaters in the
Intertie are supported, at least in part, by the Utah VHF Society.
The Levan Peak repeater is on 145.27 with a negative offset and a subaudible tone of 103.5 Hz. The primary coverage area of this repeater is along the Interstate 15 corridor from Santaquin to south of Fillmore. It covers large portions Juab and Sanpete counties plus portions of Utah, Tooele, and Millard counties. Please note that this repeater shares the same frequency as two other Intertie repeaters, namely the Scotts Hill and Mount Harrison repeaters, so please refrain from using any of these three repeaters in areas better-serviced by a more "local" intertie repeater. |
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The Utah VHF Society is a non-profit organization founded in 1968 to promote and coordinate the installation and use of VHF/UHF amateur repeaters throughout Utah. The society also provides financial support for aligned repeaters and serves as the recognized Frequency Coordination entity for the state of Utah. The society, however, does not offer financial support for autopatches, as that is considered to be the responsibility of the autopatch users. With your dues, please mention your callsign (if you are licensed) and whether or not you would like to be placed on the roster for the VHF Society's weekly swap net, held on the 147.12 + repeater (100.0 Hz tone) and carried on the Intermountain Intertie. Dues are $12
per year.
Membership runs for the
calendar year,
so all members (except those who have paid for multiple years) will be
current through December 31 of the same year.
Dues may be sent to: Utah VHF SocietyP.O. Box 482 Bountiful, UT 84011-0482 |
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Thanks to all our members!!!! As your
president I would
like to take a moment to express my
appreciation to all those who are members of the Society. We have
experienced many issues this year that have required us to spend a
great deal of funds to assist with a number of repeater site repairs,
upgrades, and to build new sites. Without your support none of
this
would have been possible, thanks for your dues and continued
membership. In addition we appreciate your membership as we have
grown
to the point now where we have become the largest Amateur Radio
Organization in the State of Utah. Thanks again and please
continue to
invite and encourage your fellow hams to become part of the Utah VHF
Society.
In the near
future we expect to be receiving more requests for
D-STAR repeater frequencies. At present we have one operational
D-STAR
site at Nelson Peak thanks to Dave Williams, WA7GIE, and we should have
one or two more become operational some time in 2008. We are
doing all
we can to support this new technology and we may have to ask some
groups to work with us to move to a new frequency so that we can free
up blocks of frequency pairs to make the best possible use of the
limited number of frequency pairs we have available. John Hayes, K7VE,
is doing an excellent job educating and training folks on the technical
issues and benefits of D-STAR and will be happy to help you answer any
quests with regard to this new technology, contact him at john@hays.org.
Please
watch this web site for
future announcements regarding
D-STAR. For more information about some of the technical aspects
of D-Star, look at the following links as well as links on these pages:
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"Paper repeater" recycling still in
progress:
As you probably know, the bands are
becoming increasingly crowded while
the demand for frequencies for repeaters is also increasing. It
is for this reason that more strict observance of various aspect of repeater coordination
will occur, such as:
If
you have
a repeater that has been proposed for
operation or has been off the air, You should contact the Frequency
Coordinator immediately to avoid loss of this
coordination - and this is particularly true of 2 meter and 70cm
repeaters where unused frequencies are essentially nonexistent along
the Wasatch Front!
Intermountain Intertie work projects
John
Lloyd, K7JL, has
published a list of projects currently underway pertaining to the
upgrading and maintenance of the Intermountain Intertie.
If you are curious as to what is planned - and if you wish to find out what you can do to help, read about it here. |
