Repeater Upgrade Project Update

A team of volunteers will be working at the Wilderness site in early June to replace the DR-1X repeaters with new to us Motorola MTR2000 commercial repeaters. Sensitivity throughout the winter has been lackluster at best. Fortunately there haven’t been a lot of public service events and no emergency communication incidents on the repeaters since the swap in October. With COVID-19 delaying/cancelling most public events the last couple months and in to early summer, we have a window of time to replace the hardware without affecting the public service mission of the team.

Due to the way there was other hardware mounted on the pole we’re attached to at the site, we had to temporarily mount the new Sinclair dipole antenna on to an abandoned power mast on the building. The way it sits places the metal roof in front of/in line with the VHF dipoles and reflects a bit on the UHF dipoles (UHF over VHF stacked on a common mast). Moving up to the pole will do two things for the emergency communications repeaters: 1) improves coverage by clearing from the metal obstructions on the roof and 2) moves us above/in line with the FM broadcaster on the pole which directly affects the noise floor of the receivers.

Valley Wide REACT operates a total of several amateur repeaters to support public service and emergency communications in the Treasure Valley:

  • Full Time Repeaters
    • 146.780- PL100.0/100.0 at Wilderness Ridge near Bogus Basin known as North Command
    • 444.725+ PL100.0/100.0 at Wilderness Ridge near Bogus Basin known as North Ops
    • 444.275+ PL123.0/123.0 at Crescent Rim in downtown Boise known as Valley Ops
  • Tactical Repeaters
    • 444.275+ PL100.0/100.0 on demand for the Middleton area known as West Ops
    • 146.780- PL88.5/CSQ on demand portable repeater
    • VHF Business Band suitcase repeater 151/158 MHz

These repeaters are used to support logistics and disaster support needs for the all-volunteer Valley Wide REACT team, amateur radio operators and the community.