220 Repeater Information

     The KD8BIW Repeater is sponsored by Gregg KA8GKT, Rob KD8FTR, and Mike KD8IYX.  The repeater started it's life as a Spectrum Communications SCR-1000 back in 1979.  When we acquired it, it was in bad health.  The receiver was poor, and the old exciter and amp had seen better days as well.  The repeater was gutted, removing everything except the new controller, which is a Micro Computer Concepts RC-100 that was installed in the mid 1990's.  We replaced the 30 year old equipment with new Hamtronics receiver and exciter boards.  These are synthesized, state-of-the-art units that require no crystals, and simply work great!  We rebuilt the original amplifier and re-installed it.  We purchased a CSI-32 community tone panel from Dave Firis- AL7OP, to use as a CTCSS decoder/encoder.  Everything was put together, tuned, and placed on the air.  The antenna being used is a Hustler G7-220 with 240ft of 7/8 hardline feeding it.  The old amp worked, put it was spurious, and was only making 10 watts, it originally made 30, so it was time to replace it.  We then acquired a Uniden ARX-1250 commercial 220 amplifier and power supply from Scott Ferko-AI8S.  If you are familiar with these, you know that they are built like tanks!  The amps was built by Milcom for Uniden, and runs on 28 volts and is capable of 125+ watts continuous duty on ACSB (side band).  It is currently putting +/-70 watts into the feedline, for an ERP of roughly 250 watts.   A used GE rack mount cabinet was donated by Radio Communications of Ohio in Marion to mount all of the equipment.  The new amp and repeater were moved into the new cabinet on 11/15/09 and placed in service.  With the new higher power amp in line, the old Wacom WP-652 cavities did not provide enough isolation to prevent some pretty serious desense.  Two additional Wacom WP-652 cavities were donated by Ken Snare- KC8BPE.  With an additional cavitiy on transmit and receive, we now have plenty of isolation to keep it all working as it should.  So far, everything seems to be working great.    Please let us know how it is working for you!  Send signal reports to KD8BIW@hotmail.com and we hope you enjoy using the repeater!

This picture was taken off the www.k5ehx.net website. This is a more accurate representation of the repeater coverage.  Check out his site, it has a lot of repeaters on it, and it is a searchable map.  Thanks!

We have moved the repeater to it's new home and are very anxious to see how it will work for everyone!  The new site, located in Widowville Ohio, is the highest spot in Ashland County.  Sitting at almost 1400ft above sea level,  we are roughly 250ft up the tower, giving us a total of 1650ft ASL and a HAAT of ~470ft!

We would like to extend thanks to the following people/businesses for their part in making the 220 repeater come to life:  

Doug Dunham for being a great landlord
Radio Communications of Ohio for the rack cabinet
Ken Snare for the extra cavaties
Scott Furko for the new amplifier
Gregg Stephens for what he did :)
Mike, Robert, Kris, and Greg for their support.
Kris for hosting Echolink at his house!
The amateur community for using the repeater