This morning I found the Arden Hills 442.075+ (110.9 PL) to be back on the air. It's been down for about three weeks, and its failure caused a bit of consternation because nobody seemed to know who the local contact for the machine was. The ostensible trustee lives about 250 miles away, and he's the trustee for most of the (more than) two dozen linked repeaters that comprise WINET.
For those that aren't familiar with WINET, the UHF machine in Arden Hills is RF-linked to other UHF repeaters all over Wisconsin. If you talk on one, you are talking on all of them. Between the Arden Hills and River Falls (WI) repeaters, there's coverage from Elk River to Red Wing. Parts of south-eastern Minnesota are also covered by the Galesville (WI) repeater.
WINET is not to be confused with WECOMM. WINET is a UHF linked network. WECOMM operates nine linked VHF repeaters, one of them being the 145.250 repeater in Baldwin. WECOMM's coverage maps are a bit "optimistic", in my opinion. My place in Plymouth is shown within their coverage area, and I can't reach it reliably with 50W.
Tropo is great this morning, and I was able to reach repeaters in Mankato, Willmar, and Owatonna.
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