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The Repeaters of the
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The Utah Amateur Radio Club (UARC) supports four
repeaters along the Wasatch Front: The 146.76 repeater on
Lake Mountain (west of Provo, Utah), the 146.62 and the 449.10,
both on Farnsworth Peak, and 146.62 on Scott's Hill above
Brighton.
There is are two 146.62 repeaters - one on Farnsworth Peak, west of the Salt Lake Valley and another on Scott's Hill, near Brighton, in the mountains east of Salt Lake. These repeaters operate together, on the same frequency, as a single, wide-area repeater using voting receivers and synchronous (simulcasting) transmitters.
A lot of people think that the way to learn about repeaters is to visit the repeater site.
While there is certainly a lot that can be learned there, many people may not learn very much if they don't already know the prerequisites: How transmitters and receivers work. The transmitters and receivers that repeaters use are fundamentally the same as the ones that we use from our homes and automobiles.
So the first step is really to understand your own radio: Know what the block diagram of a superheterodyne receiver looks like. Know what a mixer is. Know what an oscillator circuit or a multiplier circuit looks like. (Almost all of this can be found in ARRL's "The Radio Amateur's Handbook".)
Once you know the fundamentals, then you can easily pick up information about the handful of things that are unique to repeaters such as cavity filters, desensitization, site noise floors, and transmitter noise spectra. After all, it'll all make more sense if 'ya know what you're lookin' at!UARC DF (Direction Finding) Page
Have you ever want to get involved in the transmitter hunts held by various groups? Or, maybe figure out who it is that unknowingly sat on their microphone? Maybe you wanted to find out who the person making unidentified, obscene transmissions on the repeater? Then you need to equip yourself some direction-finding equipment..
Direction-finding is surprisingly easy and inexpensive to get started in: You can use a use the HT/antenna that you probably already have, or you could enhance it with a simple yagi and a simple attenuator - or even build one of the simple homing circuits with a single integrated circuit or even, with a bit of skill, you can build your own DF unit for a few tens of dollars if you can use a soldering iron and read a schematic. (And you learned that when studying for your test, right?)
Clint, KA7OEI, has put together some information to help you get started. Check the UARC DFing Page for some basic pointers and the famed circuits designed by Mike Mladejovsky, WA7ARK. Mike has been involved with CAP in locating downed aircraft. His team has won a national contest and located their target a good hour before the nearest competition. Mike's circuits have been circulating in the Utah ham community (and abroad!) for a number of years and are now available here on the web.
Even if you don't know how to build an electronic circuit, get
together with someone who can and work together on
it. It's fun - and you never know: You might enjoy it
and learn something!
This page last updated on 20120426