It's fun to read about these various far-reaching repeaters. I'm not sure it matters whose repeater has greater coverage, but it does show a lot of people have put up some great repeaters at excellent locations.
I've been a user of the W6CX FM repeater atop Mt. Diablo in Northern California. A couple of years ago I was in Reno, NV and was able to kerchunk that repeater, a distance of about 200 miles. My mobile antenna is ok, but not great. I've often had full-quieting QSOs at 80 miles out, and I've talked to people who've made the repeater mobile from 125 miles. I have mostly switched to D-Star repeaters. Now I get a kick out of making K6MDD, also on Mt. Diablo, using a 5 watt HT and 17" rubber duck antenna from 40 miles away with perfect audio, no R2D2. I have no idea how many square miles coverage either of those repeaters has -- it would be hard to measure since the Pacific Ocean is to the west. But they certainly serve the greater SF Bay Area very well. Jim - K6JM ----- Original Message ----- From: Evans F. Mitchell KD4EFM To: [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2010 4:27 PM Subject: RE: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Antenna stack 900 square miles??? where are you located or talking about? Here is one of many best laid out systems in the Tampa Bay Area.... http://www.ni4ce.org/dstar PORT B box no amp at 805 feet, See map for idea on it's coverage area for this GW... Next would be KJ4ACN at 600 ASL. We have NEAR COAST TO COAST foot print (I-275 in St Pete to I-95 in Melbourne) We cover our own county and then some... You can see where we are on APRS also... Answer.com says this about square miles... The total area of NYC is approx. 468.9 sqr miles. 900 square miles, your going to need a rooftop (or site) at 600 feet, two 65 watt amps on port b and c, and by far some really clean ARR rcv amps (or Chip Angle's) 6 BpBr by TX/RX, and extreme low loss coax to replace the STOCK coaxes in the boxes.. and TIME. (Polk County Fla total land area is approx. 1875 sq miles <total 2,010>, 4th largest in the state) (by the way, I am being VERY conservative here....) DB224 for VHF, 16 bay UHF, Hustler for the 23cm, TX/RX tri-plexer for 23cm for 23cm Voice and Data I have not even gotten into hardlines here... the shorter the better... but we have 1 - 2.25 inch hardline at 380' feet end to end for 23cm. with a loss of .72 per 100 BUT we get about 35 to 40 mile coverage with that.. (about equal to our VHF analog station) and the 23cm Hustler is at the 360 foot spot with a 4 foot standoff. (yes that is what we had to go with....a toothpick maker that is DC grounded) I could go on and on... but two the the high mileage systems in the Tampa Area are NI4CE and KJ4ACN. and that's only a 280 +/- foot difference in Sea Level. Land coverage, you want height and up 65 watts out Saturation, 200 to 400 feet with 65 watt PA's will do it. (remember the short the run, the better....) Having a D-Star stack work like you want it to..... PRICE, give or take a thousand, 36,750 ( or a new car!!!!!! ) Having it work like it should, on paper...... PRICELESS. Most of the Florida admin on here will tell you, I am not too far off the path on what we have going on down here, since this is the first time in YEARS where we can cover our state on a single Interstate system using this kind of technology, RF never made it, Internet advanced it, but D-Star, DONE! http://www.florida-dstar.info
