• IRLP Node 3352 is now in service on the Lake Mountain 146.76 repeater.  For more information, go to the UARC IRLP page.
• UARC's ATV repeater is currently retransmitting NASA Space Shuttle missions as they happen.  Go here to find out more!

The Utah Amateur Radio Club (UARC) supports four repeaters along the Wasatch Front:  The 146.76 repeater on Lake Mountain (west of Provo, Utah), and the 146.62, the 449.10, and the ATV repeater, all on Farnsworth Peak.

Look farther down this page for links to virtual tours of the repeater sites!

• 146.760 - Lake Mountain:  The oldest of these repeaters is the 146.760 repeater on Lake Mountain west of Orem, Utah. This repeater has two telephone patches open to UARC members and out-of-town guests. One patch covers Orem, Provo, and related calling areas, and the other patch covers the Salt Lake valley, and southern Davis county.  This repeater is also IRLP node #3352 - for more information, see the UARC IRLP page.
• 146.620 - Farnsworth Peak:  Another repeater is the 146.620 repeater on Farnsworth Peak, 18 miles southwest of downtown Salt Lake City. This repeater is used as a general-purpose ragchew repeater. This repeater covers as far south as Nephi, as far north as Malad, Idaho, and as far west as Wendover, using a 1/4 wave antenna and 50 watts, mobile.
• 449.100 - Farnsworth Peak:  A third repeater is also located on Farnsworth Peak, and it operates on 449.100 MHz. This repeater also sports an autopatch covering the Salt Lake City area.  This repeater, unlike the '62 and '76, is actually owned and operated by Glen Worthington, WA7X with some support from UARC (i.e. use of the repeater site, etc.)  Specific questions about this repeater should be directed toward Glen.
• 145.17 - The Scott's Hill repeater.  Progress continues on UARC's Scotts Hill site.  Originally, the plan was to install and have operating a repeater on 145.17 to test the equipment over the winter, but unexpected circumstances prevented full testing and installation of the (now operational) repeater before the site snowed in.  In the summer of 2006 this repeater will be reconfigured and linked to the 146.62 repeater on Farnsworth Peak - and have it operate on the same frequency! This linked system will operate with voting receivers and synchronous transmitters, so it will appear to be one repeater with huge coverage!  To find out how this synchronous and voting repeater system will work, click here.  To find out where this repeater will cover, look at the predicted signal contours page.
  
• The ATV repeater:  A fourth UARC repeater is the WB7FID ATV repeater. This repeater, supported by UARC, is designed to repeat Amateur TeleVision signals.  This repeater, also on Farnsworth Peak, is currently under construction and in a testing phase.  This repeater is now retransmitting NASA Space Shuttle Missions as they are happening (and only when there is a shuttle in space, of course.)  For more information about this repeater, visit both the New WB7FID ATV Repeater page and the Utah ATV Home Page.

The UARC IRLP Node (#3352) is currently operational.  For more information, see the UARC IRLP Node page.
 

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!
 
 

You can take visual tours of the following UARC repeater sites:

• The 146.76 Repeater. Take this tour first and learn more about how repeaters work, in general.
• The 146.62 Repeater. This is the well-known Farnsworth Peak repeater.  This repeater is unique in that it is really a split-site repeater.  Read here for the exciting story about how the '62 repeater came to be!
• Pictures of the pieces of the WB7FID ATV repeater may be seen here.  The "virtual tour" of the installed equipment is not yet available (as the repeater is not fully installed...) but since it is at the same site as the 146.62 repeater, you can get the general idea of the site by going to that page (see the link above.)
• A few pictures of the Scott's Hill Site! This is the site at which UARC will install a repeater that operates synchronously with the 146.62 repeater! (Click here to find out how a synchronous repeater works.)
• The tour of the 449.10 repeater is in the works. Please watch this space, we'll get it done eventually...
• There is also the Repeater Status page:  This page shows the current status of UARCs repeaters, as well as notes on previous repeater-related activities.

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!

This page last updated on 20051205

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