Just a few days ago, N0BVE (Don) put the C4FM UHF 442.925+ (114.8) repeater back on the air. Previously, Don had tuned it to 444.100+ to temporarily take the place of the TCFMC's prime UHF repeater while it was being taken down and moved to St. Louis Park. This C4FM repeater is not to be confused with the 444.925+ analogue repeater connected to the HandiHam network and operating out of Chaska.
I've been trying to key up the C4FM .925 every few days or so, in hopes that it would be working again. On Tuesday, I was quite surprised to not only "ker-chunk" it, but to find KE0NA (Dave) come back to my thrown sign! Even more astonishing was to find out moments later that Dave was talking on the 1.25M 223.900- (100.0 PL) "Aggrandizer" repeater.
What I discovered is that Don not only put the repeater back on the air, but that he also connected it to a WIRES-X box (Yaesu HRI-200). This allowed him to link both the 223.900- and the Prior Lake 442.175+ (100.0 PL) to the 442.925 machine. On top of that, he also linked the box to a WIRES-X "room" in Beaumont, TX. There's a surprising amount of activity on this nearly unknown repeater.
The 442.175+ (hybrid C4FM) repeater is operated by N0AGI (Nagi) -- one of the founders of the Doers Co-op -- and it covers the SW metro nearly down to Mankato. The topography of Prior Lake isn't favourable to such a UHF machine reaching into the rest of the metro, so this link is nice to have. Even from here in Plymouth, I have trouble reaching the VHF and UHF repeaters in Carver and Chaska, and they only come back S4 or S5. By operating on the 442.925, I now have clear access to the lower areas to the south-west of the metro.
The cross-band aspect of this arrangement is also intriguing. There hasn't been a strong history of success in linking 1.25M repeaters to UHF, and I am unaware of it ever being tried on VHF. N0FKM (Dan) had a (one-way) link from the 444.750+ to the 224.500- that died a slow and lingering death in late 2013. And KG0BP (Chris) took down the link between his HandiHam UHF .850 and the 223.940- (100.0 PL) well over a year ago. Neither the UHF repeater nor the link has been heard from since. K0LAV (Paul) has plans to link his 224.100- (no PL) machine to his new VHF 147.390+ (94.8 PL), but I'm still unable to raise the 1.25M machine from my location -- nor have I ever been able to.
For the time being, anyway, local hams can indirectly access the most powerful 1.25M repeater in the State simply by tuning their UHF rigs to 442.925, and the few brave souls operating on 1.25M are no longer isolated from the other bands. While the C4FM .925 is not linked to the HandiHam network, nor to the VHF 145.230 SNP repeater, it has significant activity from the Texas community and sporadic activity from the two linked repeaters. It's an exciting and unique development. Since the C4FM .925 has been doing other things for so long, I haven't been able to put its coverage to the test. Operating out of Minnetonka, reaching the repeater from Plymouth is hardly a challenge. KA0KMJ (John) has told me that he has no trouble reaching it from Osseo, but that's all of the empirical evidence that I have until I can get out for a drive and find out for myself.
The C4FM .925 is, per Don, operating in hybrid mode. This means that analogue FM radios and System Fusion radios can both access it. Until Yaesu upgrades its firmware, however, the C4FM signals will get converted to analogue before being passed on to the linked repeaters or the WIRES-X room. I'm currently unaware of any C4FM repeater operating completely in digital mode.
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