Sept 22, 2026 – “Repeat of an “Overview of the “Intermountain Intertie System”

Good evening. This is W1UT and tonight I will present a repeat of the Intermountain Intertie System. I know a number of new hams who have gotten their licenses since I gave this training last January on the Intertie system.

The Intertie system consists of some 35 repeaters RF linked together to provide broad intermountain area coverage and extends from eastern Oregon across much of southern Idaho including into Yellowstone National Park. There is also a permanent link to a repeater in Bozeman, MT. In Utah the coverage is mainly along the I-15 corridor including Cache valley and Bear Lake area and parts of I-70 including in central Utah from south of Price to the south, and much of southern Utah from St. George east to Monument Valley. There is a repeater also in SW Wyoming covering I-80 to Green River. Coverage in southern Nevada is provided along I-15 into the Las Vegas area. Finally the system extends south into Arizona along SR89 into Flagstaff and points south into the Phoenix area. Coverage across this vast area is all done using RF links. There are no internet connections. Using Google Earth the total coverage area is approximately 165,000+ sq miles.

Many parts of the system are accessible using a handheld radio, but signals are always best when using a 50W radio and an external antenna. One of the reasons the system covers such a vast area is due to many of the repeaters located on top of mountain peaks. This also facilitates RF links from one high mountain repeater to another. The owners of some sites sometimes require a fee for the use of their facilities on the site such as power and tower and building access. Your dues are used to pay these fees along with repairs to the equipment and replacing aging radios, feedline, controllers and antennas.

Some repeater sites have multiple UHF link radios configured to point in different directions to other repeater sites using directional antennas. For example the Farnsworth site has up to 8 link radios and antennas pointed in various directions. All radios are connected to a repeater controller. These controllers allow control of each repeater and link radio at each site which can isolate parts of the Intertie system as needed.

I believe the longest system path is from eastern Oregon all the way south to the Phoenix area and requires some 10 linked repeaters to make the trip. This is why several seconds are required from the time you press your PTT button until you should start talking. It takes time for all the links to be activated.

There are times when equipment, either a VHF repeater or a UHF link fails. This requires someone to travel to the repeater site which may not be possible during winter months due to inaccessibility. Please be patient when equipment failures take a repeater off the air. Link failures can be even more dramatic as some links do not have redundancy. Power failures can also impact the system although many sites have back up power. The system was designed to be as reliable as possible given the resources of the VHF society. You can check on the status of the Intertie System by going to the Utah VHF Society home webpage and clicking on The “Intermountain Intertie and its linked systems” link. Also the website provides the frequencies and other information to access the linked repeaters. Currently there are (2) VHF repeaters that have failed in the system and couple of others that have controller issues.