Category Archives: Amateur Radio

3 Site Simulcast

We’ve been simulcasting from Cedarwood and Salida for several months now with pretty good results.  In certain areas you can hear both transmitters.  While it’s still usable it doesn’t sound as clean as I’d like.  We’ll be trying a third simulcast site right in the middle of the other 2 so we can see what happens.  Stay tuned.

Simulcast Update

The Salida site has a GPSDO keeping the transmitter dead on frequency.  Another advantage to this setup is that we have a better GPS antenna more suited to mountain top operation with lightning protection.  The Cedarwood site is next as soon as funds allow.  If you’re in a transmitter overlap (places from Penrose to Pueblo West) area you might hear a little growl on the received signal until we finish the install.

Simulcast

So we’re finally testing simulcast.  After learning a lot about simulcast our plan to test changed a bit.  I had planned on implementing this on Cedarwood and Pueblo but given the tremendous overlap in coverage we chose a different transmitter site.  The Simulcast transmitters are on Cedarwood and Methodist as those sites have minimal overlap.  We still don’t have any GPSDO’s installed to control transmitter frequency but I hope to at least have one installed on Methodist before the snow flies and continue learning about this technology.

Black Forest Repeater

The Black Forest Repeater should be on air Monday if all goes well.  This is a Fun Machine affiliate being hosted by KD0MDP.  Thanks Jeff!  It will be on 447.625 with a 100.0 tone.  Update: Change in frequency due to a coordination issue.  Should be on air Monday June 1st

Voted Recievers

Success!!!  We’re seeing really great performance out of the voted receivers at Cedarwood and Pueblo with the transmitter at the Cedarwood site running 100 watts into a DB408 antenna pointed North.  We’ve actually used the Pueblo/Cedarwood site mobile to Walsenburg and East to LaJunta.

Thanks to all involved for your hard work and time testing!  This is a great addition to the systems in Southern Colorado!