Although I could hear traffic on the APRS 144.390, I was not able to reach any of the local infrastructure with a 5W HT. I didn't really expect to, but I wanted to try.
On the way back, though, I made fairly careful note of which repeaters I could hit. The Rush City VHF .330 could be "ker-chunked" (with my modest rig) all the way past North Branch. The Isanti VHF .210 also responded from Pine City. The Hinckley repeater dropped out around Rock Creek.
Around Harris (north of North Branch on 35W, about where the "35" icon is on the map), I was amazed to find that I could "ker-chunk" the metro 146.700- (127.3 PL) repeater. This means that it transmits even further than that -- probably at least into Pine City proper. With a full-powered rig and a roof-mounted antenna, I can easily imagine working the repeater from Pine City.
Near North Branch, the 146.820- (127.3) opened up. Again, with my modest rig, I don't believe that I could have worked it, but I could hear it. Next in line was the 147.030+ (114.8 PL) in Minneapolis coming back to me from just north of Forest Lake.
By the time I had stopped at the Forest Lake rest area (which is actually a bit south of Forest Lake), I was able to reach several repeaters. I was shocked to find that I could reach the Robbinsdale 444.775+ (114.8 PL) machine. This repeater only runs about 12W on UHF! I could actually reach most of the VHF metro repeaters from there, but I was more interested in the UHF coverage.
The two "emergency" repeaters on the band (.500 and .175) "ker-chunked", as well as the analogue side of the 444.875+ D-Star repeater. Less surprising was reaching the WINET UHF .075 repeater in Arden Hills and the 443.375+ in Bayport.
Thanks go out to KD0ZHJ (Bob) for coming back to my sign on the HandiHam 146.450 machine to confirm that I could actually get in.
Having someone to confirm that I had a readable signal on these repeaters would have been nice, but it gives me a better-than-vague idea of how far our metro repeaters reach. When the LSAC UHF 443.325+ in Isanti is restored and linked to Hinckley, hams will have continuous UHF coverage past Sandstone -- at which point they would have to switch to VHF. But even then, they would still be linked to the southern UHF repeaters.
4 comments:
Did you try the Duxbury 145.23- 146.2? It's pretty new, put up by the County maybe last fall. My father-in-law has a cabin up near Bruno and he's getting a 2-meter/MURS radio installed this year whether he wants it or not.
The Duxbury repeater works well for me all the way to North Branch.
No, I wasn't aware of the Duxbury repeater before. It looks like it has wide coverage, and it should have reached the campground. It's a bit unusual to see the VHF SNP frequency used by a wide-coverage machine, though.
Is there anyone on the Duxbury repeater?
not that I've heard, basically like most of the other repeaters outside of the metro, dead.
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