While there are already four operational 222 MHz repeaters in town, they are all on the eastern side of the metro: Arden Hills, Maplewood, Burnsville, and Mounds View.
Two repeaters are, however, located in Columbia Heights: 224.660+ (114.8) and 224.500- (114.8). These two repeaters aren't really operational, though.
Both of these machines have excellent sites on high ground that would allow very good metro-area coverage, should they be restored. This isn't idle speculation, because there are also two UHF machines at that site with "very good metro-area coverage": 444.750+ (114.8) and 444.550+ (no tone).
The 224.660 is a normal repeater, but the 224.500 is ostensibly cross-band to UHF through the 444.750 machine. The RepeaterBook listing is incorrect. With the HandiHam cross-band to the Arden Hills 1.25M temporarily shut down, it would be really nice to have the 224.500 repeater working so that there would be cross-band functionality in town.
The odd thing is that the 224.500 is working, after a fashion. Any transmission on the UHF 444.750 repeater is repeated cross-band to 220 MHz, but nothing going in to the 224.500 is repeated on either band. The 224.500 can actually transmit, but it's completely deaf to any input on the 1.25M band.
If you would like to get a taste of the potential that the 224.500 offers, just listen to the frequency as you transmit on the 444.750 UHF machine. I think that you'll be very surprised at the clear and strong signal that is re-transmitted on the 1.25M band. From out here in Plymouth, the .500 is easily the strongest signal of all those in the metro on the 1.25M band.
This odd situation made me suspect that the information for the 224.500 repeater might be wrong. After all, the listing already is incorrect as to which machine is cross-band. So I contacted the trustee for the repeater, Dan (N0FKM). It might be that the offset shift is listed wrong or the PL tone is different than what is shown.
Sadly, Dan didn't confirm that this was the case. He said that there have been issues with intermod from the public safety machines also located at the site. He also, quite reasonably, mentioned that he didn't have a great deal of free time to tackle this problem in the immediate future.
At some point, I believe that the .500 repeater will be restored. It's cross-band capability will make it second only to the HandiHam .940 in metro-area 1.25M popularity, and will probably increase use of the UHF .750 machine, which has languished in the plethora of UHF options here.
Most communities don't even have one 220 MHz repeater. The entire State of Iowa, for example, has only three working repeaters for the band. South Dakota has only one, and North Dakota none. Wisconsin has only three, and they are all clustered in the eastern part of the State in the Milwaukee area. We're really fortunate to have four working repeaters in the metro, even if they aren't cross-band at the moment.
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