A VHF radio, by comparison, is relatively inexpensive, costing around $100. VanOsdol believes boaters will make the investment if they know a network is available.
"The VHF radios have a range of about eight to nine miles," he said. "So to make it viable we'd need repeater stations."
quote:
"We received a bid for the entire system of $36,785," he said. "That would assure coverage for the entire lake.
I wonder how they plan on using repeaters for a simplex VHF channel (16). Most repeaters use duplexing.
If anyone can make this work it is VanOsdol. John is one of the original driving forces behind AWW. The idea may have originated with him. He is the main speaker in the original video (made available to the flotillas on CD) about it. Once AWW was released to the field it pretty much died, but I don't think you can fault John for that.
I'm not familiar with the geography of Lake Thurmond but a less expensive alternative might be to have more than one base radio or a really tall antenna.
Channel 16 is not supposed to be "repeated". As far as using repeaters, I hope he has frequency allocations prior to spending the money, otherwise he will have great "paper weights".
It turns out that something like this has already been done by the Aux.
There was a brief mention in a Report to the Commandant that 11NR had installed a narrowband repeater on Bass Mtn overlooking Shasta Lake.
Researching that I discovered the following entry in a scanner blog (whose url I forgot to record):
quote:
150.700 This remote base is linked to Marine Channel 16 (156.800) USCG San Francisco and USCG Humboldt Bay transmissions. I also just heard Monterery Bay USCG. It will re-broadcast those transmissions for the USCG Auxiliary on Lake Shasta. Also, all marine channel 16 transmissions on Lake Shasta seem to be rebroadcast over 150.700. This is probably related to the Lake's new Marine Band VHF Radio Network that the Auxiliary has installed to provide better coverage of the marine channel 16 on the Lake. There are numerous remote base stations on various Forest Service radio sites around the lake which provide the Auxiliary a way to monitor the entire lake at once.
150.700 is output side of the Aux National Repeater Pair.
