History of the 442.8 Repeater in Interlochen

 

 

KF8KK.COM

Repeaters

Coverage Maps

IOOK.ORG

The second UHF ham repeater to air in the Grand Traverse region was the KD8UX 442.80 repeater near Interlochen.

Phil, KD8UX generously provided the electricity and tower space on his 70' tower for the 442.8 repeater, but for a 2mtr packet node.

This repeater and packet node was in operation during 1992.  Exactly when operation commenced and ceased has long been lost from my memory.  Coverage for the 440 repeater was limited to about 8 miles from Interlochen.  When the repeater was shut down the frequency was returned to the coordinator for reassignment (it has since been reassigned to the Mancelona area).

 

This is the way the KD8UX 440 repeater and packet node appeared in Phil's garage at his home near Interlochen.

Atop the cabinet is the actual 442.8 repeater, a modified Motorola Flexar desktop base station.  Flexars (contrary to what some people may think) can be made to go into duplex mode as a single radio (their Moxy twins too).

This particular Flexar would only put out about 3 watts continuous duty, so a Mirage power amp was added (to the right of it in this view) to boost the repeater output to about 15 watts.
From the rear of the cabinet you can see at the very top, the rear of the UHF repeater (white heat sinks) on the left, and the UHF power amp on the right.

Inside the rack, the top spot belongs to the four cavity Motorola bandpass duplexer.

Below the duplexer, about mid-cabinet is the 145.03? VHF packet node transceiver.   This was a GE Custom Exec2 desktop base transceiver removed from the normal desktop 'cabinet'.  

At the very bottom of the cabinet is a black box which contains the 'KF8KK' homebuilt repeater controller.  Numerous of these homebuilt controllers were made, and they all are interchangeable, and allow for great flexibility in linking.  

 
The front of the rack shows the duplexer inside and below it the two meter packet node.

From this view you can get a good look at the dual stage bandpass filter that is connected in the RF path to the packet node.

Interestingly, as I look at this photo and compare it to the one at the top on this page, I notice that the image at the top of the page is proper, and the image to the left is reversed.... or am I looking through a funny mirror?

The equipment shown in these photos was supplied by KF8KK.  The Flexar in this photo is one of two that I had at the time and one of them is still in regular use-- though used as a desktop base station.