The Utah VHF Society Home Page

Thank you for attending the 2017 Utah VHF Society Swap Meet

The 2017 Utah VHF Society Swap Meet was held on Saturday, Februrary 25, 2017 at the Davis County Fairgrounds - the same location as the past several years. The turnout was quite good and a lot of faces were put with names and callsigns and a lot of "junque" changed hands!

As for official Utah VHF Society business, the 2016-2017 officers were re-elected by acclaimation for another term.

At the swap meet, the 2017 Utah VHF Society booklets were given to society members: If you did not get a booklet at the swap meet or if you are a Utah VHF Society member and could not make it to swap meet you can still get a booklet.

In the coming months, Mel Parkes, the Utah VHF Society president, will be making the rounds of the various club meetings with booklets in hand. If you want a booklet before then, or if you don't think that you will be able to make it to one of those meetings, contact Mel or any Utah VHF Society officer (contact information may be found on the Officer's page - link) so that we can get one to you.

See you next year!

Antenna work at Sawtell Peak

A "work party" was held at the Sawtell site on Tuesday, September 12, 2017 in which the repeater's antenna was oriented on an East-Southeast heading and general tower clean-up work was done to remove abandoned cables. This work, which didn't involve anything inside the building, was completed in about two hours. The ultimate result was a must stronger signal in Idaho Falls.

This work party consisted of Vance, WA7FDR; James, KG7OMB, Pat, AE7NZ and Harvey, KI7XF.

At this point it is a good idea to remind those that use the Intertie to offer their support to both the Utah VHF Society and the Idaho groups. If you wish to help and/or contribute, please contact one of the Utah VHF Society officers (link here) to find out how!

Intertie links between northern and southern Utah severed and Bear Lake "partially offline" - an update

Frisco Peak:

As a result of recent weather, as of approximately Friday, January 27, 2017 the 146.940 repeater on Frisco Peak is offline along with the links to the north (Wasatch Front) and the south (Blowhard Peak, St. George, Navajo Mtn., Las Vegas). What this means is that Intertie connectivity between the northern and southern half of the state is limited. The cause of this outage is the collapse of a tower on Frisco Peak that is believed to be related to a combination of heavy ice load and high winds. A bit more than a week before this a similar fate befell a tower on Iron Mountain that took some commercial and amateur gear offline: The tower carrying the 146.760 antenna at this site was not affected.

Although the 146.940 repeater and the links between Frisco Peak, Blowhard Peak and Utah Hill near St. George were offline after the tower fell, Don, WA7GTU was able to install a temporary antenna on 2/22 for both the '94 repeater and the link north to Salt Lake to reconnect it with the rest of the Intertie, but the links to Blowhard Peak (which include Navajo Mountain and Arizona) and St. George (with links to the Nevada) remain offline. It is expected that once these sites again have normal vehicle access - probably sometime in late April to late June, depending on the weather in the mean time - work parties will be formed. In the mean time, equipment, material and funds will be gathered.

On about March 5, high winds apparently cleared some of the snow off the antennas and the ground near the downed-tower and there was suitable link margin to allow a tenuous link to Utah Hill, restoring connectivity to St. George and Nevada as well as the link to Blowhard connecting to Navajo Mountain and into Arizona. Because the antennas are on a tower that is laying on the ground and are pointing in the wrong directions it is expected that these fragile links will come and go as conditions change.

Bear Lake:

On about February 8, 2017 extremely high winds (100+ miles per hour)took down a structure that carried amateur radio antennas at Bear Lake - including the 147.02 Intertie repeater. While this repeater may be functional, possible antenna and feedline damage and the fact that they are no longer vertical means that coverage is extremely limited.

What you can do

If you wish to help out in the rebuild of these sites - by lending a hand during the work parties and/or via donations - please contact Don Blanchard, WA7GTU regarding the southern Utah repeaters and John Lloyd about the Bear Lake repeater using the contact information on the Utah VHF Society Officer's page (link).

A notice to users of the ARRL Repeater Directory and the "RF Finder" app - an update

There is now a working agreement between the Utah Frequency coordinator and RF Finder (which also provides repeater data to the ARRL) in which it is now possible to make changes to the database. Because this update method is entirely manual (e.g. it is done online via forms and tables) it will take some time to go through the relevant Utah data and make the necessary corrections and updates. In the future, unless a means by which data may be synchronized is devised, updates to RF Finder data may lag those on the Utah VHF Society page.

Please note that the Utah VHF Society is responsible only for data related to Utah repeaters and that it will be up to other entities to keep their portions of the database current.

An update about the Idaho portion of the Intertie System

The Officers of the Utah VHF Society were approached by Vance Hawley, WA7FDR, to determine if it would be possible to obtain funds from Idaho hams the same way we do in Utah to help support the Idaho portion of the Intertie repeaters. After much discussion The Utah VHF Society Officers have agreed to begin an initial effort to ask the Idaho hams who would like to support the Idaho portion of the Intertie System to join the Utah VHF Society.

Any funds obtained through this effort or any donations we obtain from Idaho hams will be dedicated to Idaho Intertie System repeaters. We would like to thank all those who attended the Hamfest in Boise who made the initial effort to kick off this project by joining the Society and making generous contributions. Enough funds were raised via recent efforts to address some crucial needs, such as the purchase of new batteries for the Sawtell (West Yellowstone) repeater site and upgrade and maintenance for other projects. As more funds become available additional improvements will be made to the Idaho system.

Some time down the road it may be possible for our Idaho friends to create a self supporting entity similar to the Utah VHF Society, but for now we desire to do our best to help make good things happen in Idaho!

If you want to help with this effort you may do so through the Utah VHF Socity (contact information is here). Any funds obtained through this effort or any donations we obtain from Idaho hams will be dedicated to Idaho Intertie System repeaters. Please mark your membership and or donations for Idaho.

If anyone has any questions or suggestions please feel free to contact or email one of the Utah VHF Society Officers. http://utahvhfs.org

For more details about each of the Idaho Repeater Linked System repeaters please click here http://utahvhfs.org/other_rpt.html#jumpoff

New Intertie Link into Logan/Cache Valley now active.

With the help of the Bridgerland Amateur Radio Club we now have a new link into the Logan Cache Valley Area on Mt Pisgah. The Frequency of the new repeater is 449.650 and the tone is 100.0 Hz. Thanks to all the folks up in Logan who work hard to help us make this happen. This provides extra coverage to the Intertie system that many have been asking for.