K0MSP UHF repeater seems "off-air" or something

  Yesterday, I noticed that K0CE had updated the RepeaterBook listing for the 444.975+ (94.8 PL) repeater in Columbus (near Forest Lake). That's a machine that I've never been able to reach, though it's been listed as "on-air" as long as I've been licensed. Additionally, Pete in Lino Lakes has confirmed that he's also unable to "ker-chunk" it, and he's a heck of a lot closer to it than me.

  The MRC also lists the 444.975 in Columbus as working, as does the website for the K0MSP network that operates it. Even though I'm within the alleged 25-mile coverage radius of the listing here in eastern Plymouth, 20W into a three-element Yagi fails to even "ker-chunk" it. 

Even stranger, the MRC also lists a second repeater on the same frequency pair in Ramsey, though with a 114.8 PL tone instead. Though unmentioned on the K0MSP website (under the "Repeaters" tab), or in the newly-updated RepeaterBook listing, the 114.8 tone works. It only comes back as S0 -- even though Ramsey is much closer to me than Columbus -- and that makes it pretty much unusable to me. The EchoLink node for the Ramsey .975 (9644) is down, and the node for the Columbus .975 (9975) is up.

  Repeater listings are frequently incorrect, especially those put out by the MRC. Repeater trustees have an incentive to show their machines as "on-air", even when they aren't, because they risk losing co-ordination of frequency pairs that aren't being used. The websites of clubs operating repeaters also aren't updated frequently enough to reflect the real situation of their machines' status. That's why RepeaterBook is sometimes handy, because hams can update the listings to show the current status that they find. 

  As it stands, though, I have no idea what information to update. K0CE seems to believe that there's a working repeater on 444.975+ using a 94.8 PL tone, and that it has a 25-mile coverage radius. I find a working repeater on 444.975+ with a 114.8 PL tone, but it hardly reaches Plymouth, wherever it actually is. 

You may know K0MSP (the Midwest Radio Association) as the group that operates the VHF 145.370- (107.2 PL) repeater. It's the one that has a different PL tone for receiving than transmitting (118.8 PL for tone squelch). Some people have told me that the machine is currently sited in downtown Minneapolis, and I've found it has excellent coverage. Much like the VHF MARA .850, it uses remote receive sites to expand it's usefulness. With four sites (Minneapolis, Ramsey, Rosemount, and Forest Lake), it's really only weak in the west and east extreme suburbs of the metro area with my 5W mobile. Ostensibly, it has EchoLink capability, though the node at the VHF site is usually either down or marked as "busy" (even though no traffic can be heard on the .370 when it is busy). Since I've never been able to actually access the node, I can't say if it's open to commands such as opening other nodes or using EchoTest to check your audio.

  Whatever the situation is with the 444.975 K0MSP repeater, it seems that the plan for the future might involve linking it with the VHF repeater for cross-band use. That's a laudable goal, though UHF seems to be a tougher sell to rural and exurban hams.