 History of the Carteret County Amateur Radio Society and the K4GRW 145.450 MHz repeater  |
Our repeater is owned and maintained by Bob Chambers (K4GRW) and Art Gill (KD4KTO), and is located on Art’s 360-foot tower located in Morehead City near Walmart. The antenna is a CommScope DB-224, four-element vertical array dipole. One element is aimed Down East, one aimed out to sea, one aimed westward along the coastline, and the other aimed up 70 Hwy towards New Bern. Our goal was to cover as much of Carteret County as possible.  Some
may wonder why the repeater is called the “Newport
repeater”
when it is actually located in Morehead City. Well, about 45
years ago, Bob was working at Cherry Point MCAS
as a civilian tech
rep. There were a number of Hams working in and around his
office, including several Marines. At that time the only area
repeater was the Grifton repeater (146.685) that
Danny Hampton had installed. There were rumors that the New
Bern
Amateur Radio Club wanted to install a 2-meter amateur radio repeater
but the project
was stalled in club politics. So Bob, two
civilians, and
two Marines (Mark Bitterlich WA3JPY and Ed Craig
WB4PTP) decided
they would offer technical help to the New Bern Club. After
the
dust settled, Bob had volunteered to build the new repeater for the New
Bern Amateur Radio Club. One of the New Bern Club members
had a
salvaged General Electric Master Pro commercial repeater, so Bob and
his team started out with that as a nucleus. Next,
they
needed to build the control circuit cards, the phone patch and dialer
(there were no cell phones or Internet back then), the audio interface
card, CW ID, timers, squelch, and time-out timers. After the
repeater was ready to go, the team convinced the New Bern Club to opt
for a six-cavity duplexer that cost about $800 at the time, a
commercial four-element antenna ($600), and hardline ($2 per
foot). Now they needed a tower. Mr. Sid
Purvis was a
Ham and New Bern Amateur Radio Club member, and a friend of the manager
of Weyerhaeuser Paper Company. Sid managed to to get
permission
to install the new antenna and repeater system on one of Weyerhaeuser’s
towers located in Riverdale near James City. So Mark and Ed
climbed the 300-foot tower and installed the new antenna
array.
The New Bern Club insisted that two of the elements point towards
Jacksonville, one point towards New Bern, and one point north up the
Hwy 17 corridor,
so there was little coverage for Havelock and Carteret
County.
The new repeater worked great, in the directions the antenna elements
were pointing.
After
a few years of working
with the New Bern Amateur Radio Clubs 146.61 repeater, Ham activity in
Carteret County on the 2-meter portable and other mobile Ham bands
increased
and there was more interest in Amateur Radio in the Down East area.
The New Bern Clubs 146.61 repeater coverage in Carteret
County
was “spotty” at best with hardly any coverage beyond Morehead
City. The New Bern Club was not interested in turning one of
their antenna elements towards Morehead City, so Bob Chambers and his
team of four volunteers began looking for a new location in Carteret
County to install another repeater. One day, Bob was speaking
to
Art Gill about the teams plans and their problems securing a
suitable location for a new repeater. Art owned AnserQuick Communications Co.
in Morehead City. He donated a General Electric Master Pro
repeater, and Bob modified it to work on the Ham radio bands, then
he built the control interface circuits just like he did for the New
Bern Amateur Radio Club. The team members pitched in $200
each
and purchased yet another six-cavity duplexer. Art
donated
a surplus four-element VHF antenna and Mark donated the
hardline. The team assembled all this stuff
together and
had a working repeater, but had nowhere to install
it.
Art’s 360-foot tower on Little Nine Road in Morehead City didn’t exist
at the time, and his other tower was full. By this time, Bob
was
working at the Town of Newport and got permission from the Newport
water
department commissioner to install the antenna on top of the towns
water tower, 125 feet in height. By this time, the team was
beginning to get a lot of interest from local Hams and the Carteret
County Amateur Radio Society was becoming active
again.
Mark and Bob climbed the town’s water tower and installed the
antenna. The repeater worked well, but did not have a very
good
range, but at least Havelock, Beaufort, Morehead City, and Atlantic
Beach areas had coverage. There was still no
cellular
service in the area, so Bob had a residential phone line installed for
the
repeater and paid for the cost of the phone line
himself.
After a few years, Keith Godwin took over the cost of the phone line
until
the Carteret County Amateur Radio Society picked up the cost of the
auto patch several years later. Eventually cellular service
came
to the Down East area, eliminating the need for the phone patch and
landline.
Eventually
the “Newport
repeater" was relocated to the 500-hundred foot TV tower on 70 Hwy in
Newport owned by Time Warner Cable. Bob and Ed did the
installation. Ed climbed the 500-foot tower and installed the
antenna, and Art offered to allow the “Newport repeater” to share his
pager company’s antenna system. His antenna was
designed
for 157 MHz service, so the SWR was 3:1. Otherwise, it worked
great and there was 2-meter Ham radio coverage for most of Carteret
County and much of Craven County. It was a feat how the team
made
the repeater and the 300-watt paging transmitter share the same
antenna. Bob solved the problem by using a coaxial “T”
fitting,
then he tuned the stub coax cable from the paging transmitter to the
antenna, then he used a coaxial tuned “stub” between the “T” and the
repeaters 6-cavity duplexer. Danny Hampton, who was known as “Mr. Communications”
in Raleigh, NC called Bob to give a favorable signal
report. So for many years, the repeater operated
efficiently from the 500-foot Time Warner Cable TV Tower in
Newport.
Eventually, Art terminated his paging system contract with Time Warner,
so the repeater had to shut down. With no place to relocate
the
“Newport repeater", the Carteret County Amateur Radio Society put the
repeater in storage.
During
the time that the Carteret County Amateur Radio
Society’s repeater was in storage, Mark (WA3JPY) was busy installing “Packet Digi-peaters”
in Pamlico and Craven County and he needed some duplexers. He
inquired if Bob would donate his 1/4 share of the new duplexer to him,
and Bob agreed. A couple of years later, Art
completed the
construction of a 360-foot tower on Little Nine Road in Morehead City
in the Wildwood community beside Walmart. Robert McNeal
(W4MBD),
Craig Willis, and Charley Brown (K4VIR) contacted Bob and asked if he
would re-install the “Newport repeater” on Arts new 360-foot tower by
Walmart if they raised enough funds from local Hams to purchase a new
set of duplexers and assist him with whatever he needed to get the
repeater back on the air. However, a
subsequent inspection of the old
GE
Master Pro repeater in storage revealed that it was not worth the cost
and labor to refurbish, so Art donated a surplus General Electric
Master III repeater that was all solid state and in good
condition. After some modifications and re-tuning, Bob and
his
team got the transceiver working efficiently. But the old
repeater control system was obsolete, so Bob purchased a
commercial-grade, CAT 250 Controller with all the bells and
whistles. Once again, the new repeater was working
well.
The team then bought a commercial grade 4-element, 2-meter antenna
array and tuned it to 145.450 MHz and Art donated the
hardline.
With the help of Art Gill, Robert McNeil, and others, the team was able
to get the Newport repeater back on the air. It was
several
years later that the City of Morehead expanded, which put the
“Newport repeater” inside the city limits of Morehead City.
While
we’re on the subject of the “Newport repeater”, we might as well tell
you about the IRLP system on the repeater. During the time
the
Newport repeater was shut down, Dusty (W4ICW) was visiting Morehead
City from Raleigh on the weekends. He had a Cabin
Cruiser
boat that he lived on while he was in Morehead City, and he wanted to
be
able to talk to Ham friends back home in Raleigh on his 2-meter
radio. Dusty coordinated and got possession of a
2-meter
repeater frequency and intended to install a new repeater with a new
technology called “Internet
Radio Linking Protocol”
(IRLP), and he installed the new system on his boat. The IRLP
system worked well and was fun for local Hams to use.
Unfortunately, Dusty had a lightning strike that blew up his repeater
on his boat. Dusty donated the IRLP computer and other
equipment
to the Carteret County Amateur Radio Society for Bob to integrated into
the Newport repeater system. Bob paid the $300 registration
fee
and joined the IRLP Organization headquartered in Canada. The
IRLP Organization sent him new proprietary circuit cards and the Linux
software with his new membership, which he installed on an old
PC. Art again donated use of his Internet line at
his tower
site on Little Nine Road, and again the Newport repeater was up and
running, this time with IRLP enabled. So far, during the life
of
the IRLP system, the Carteret County Amateur Radio Society has gone
through two PC’s and we have installed the latest Linux Debian
software. Bob is today able to control the repeater system
from
the Internet and perform maintenance on the system remotely.
Users may occasionally hear Bob making adjustments to the audio, the
repeater system
timers, and other stuff. Carteret County Amateur Radio
Society
welcomes any licensed Amateur to use the K4GRW IRLP system.
To
learn
more about IRLP, visit www.irlp.net.
73 de Bob Chambers, K4GRW September 2nd, 2020 |
| K4GRW Newport Repeater Downlink 145.450 MHz, Uplink 144.850 MHz CTCSS Uplink Tone 100 Hz, Offset -0.6 MHz IRLP Node 4903 Carteret County Emergency Net: first, second, and third Tuesdays at 19:30 hrs. |