Monday, 1 December 2014

St. Cloud UHF repeater correction

Previously, I wrote about an updated listing for a UHF repeater in St. Cloud, the 443.450+ (123.0 PL). 

There was some confusion between 443.850+ repeater (which is D-Star) and the 443.450+ repeater (which is analogue). KD0RRA (Travis) kind of sensed that something was not quite factually correct in my post, and he confirmed the situation with St. Cloud local KD0ILS (Peter): 
"The "kcld440" (443.450 pl 123.0) as a lot of people call it is operated by the st. Cloud club and is still analog and knowing the club will probably stay that way indefinitely. The tower is on the west side of Roosevelt road between cooper and 22nd street south. Currently this repeater is momentarily down for duplexer alignment.

The DARC dstar (443.850) was going to be on sherbune hall at scsu but with the help of alex Hartman kd0whu the digital repeater is on a the kvsc (college radio station) tower, south of quarry park. "
This explains why I doubted the estimated coverage of the repeater shown in the updated listing; it simply isn't on-air at the moment. A 60-mile coverage radius is impressive, if it's true. 

This also explains the mix-up, as the D-Star repeater (444.850) just moved to a new site. Nothing significant really changed for the analogue repeater (443.450), but the listing was updated with the coverage radius. 

So, to be absolutely clear: 
  • The 444.850 repeater is a D-Star repeater, it's on a great new site, and it allegedly reaches into the northern suburbs, at least.
  • The 443.450 is a standard analogue repeater, and its owners are estimating a 60-mile coverage radius, which would include most of Minneapolis and parts of St. Paul...when it is back on the air. 
Thanks to Travis and Peter for getting to the bottom of this.

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