Examples of the Tait Commercial Equipment being used for the Linking Project

What is it?

The PVRA Club has begun an ambitious project which will allow all the PVRA repeaters to be linked together in various combinations.  

Plans are to have:

Western link network consisting of: Vernon, 145.41, Naugatuck, Torrington, and Danbury.  

When the Danbury link comes on-line you will be able to talk on the same repeater system from I84 on the New York border to I84 at the Mass Pike with coverage on I91 from New Haven to beyond Springfield, MA!!!!

Eastern link network consisting of: Vernon 146.79 and some new repeater sites in Eastern Connecticut.

440 Mhz Link:  A Network of 440 Mhz repeaters throughout the state, possibly in some areas where there are no 2 meter frequency allocations left.

The linking will be flexible and programmable and various configurations will tried in order to determine the best utilization and coverage.

New Repeaters Coming to PVRA!!!

The N1AF 146.745 repeater will be moved to the WCCC tower in West Hartford/Avon and will join the PVRA eastern network.

A new repeater on 145.25 will be coming to the Vernon area as well, or possibly moved to one of the other sites, if a coordinated frequency can be found.

Other sites up for consideration for new repeaters are:  East Killingly, Ledyard, New Haven, Norwalk, Stamford, Wolcott, and Durham/Middletown.  Some of those sites may have only 440 Mhz repeaters due to the frequency allocations available.

New Tait repeaters for 2 meters and 440 Mhz have been received for Danbury and are being assembled.

New Tait repeaters for Prospect are on order and due to be received by Feb. 1st.

The hub of the system will be the Marcus Communication site on Box Mountain, Vernon/Bolton, CT  That site will contain the bulk of the hardware necessary to network the various repeaters.  The site has an automatic switching generator system with secondary battery backup.

With the 450' tower on 850' Box Mountain, that site will be able to communicate with all the remote sites on the 440 Mhz and/or 900 Mhz Ham bands.

There will be 2 - 900 Mhz link repeaters at that site. Each repeater will have a link receiver to each remote site.  Each repeater and it's associated receivers will be controlled by it's own Link-Comm RLC-3 repeater controller.

Each site will have a Tait Slimline Link Receiver/Transmitter connected to the local repeater controller.

Each main Link Repeater at Box Mountain will have 8 link receivers and one link transmitter all connected to a RLC-3 controller.  The both controllers will be connected to allow complete flexibility to interconnect each network.

W1HDN - Homeland Defense Network....

The Homeland Defense Network is a registered trademark of Marcus Communications.  The PVRA has been designated the Amateur Auxiliary of the Homeland Defense Network.  The goal is to provide redundant radio systems that can be configured in the optimal configuration for any emergency.  All the PVRA sites have emergency backup power and the network will not require any public infrastructure systems to operate in an emergency just as it does on a daily basis, except possibly with reduced power in some locations.

In an emergency, it will be possible to link the whole system if necessary, possibly for a short time.  Then a local repeater could be separated to handle local traffic, while a 440 Mhz repeater could remain linked to a remote site to coordinate with other areas.

When?

The majority of the equipment has been purchased and is being assembled, with a small amount still on order and to be received shortly.  You should be some progress every month...

Special thanks to Bruce Marcus, N1XG and Marcus Communications for providing the commercial duty repeater equipment for this project.

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