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Owner : Amateur Radio Transmitting Society of Louisville
Trustee: Jim Vaughan K4TXJ
Repeater Maintenance: Ted Sims AI4LV
Paul Link KA4MKT
Frequency 147.180 MHz
+ 600 KHz Offset
PL Tone 79.7 Hz
Echolink node # 425970
You can listen to our repeater online:
About the repeater
The W4CN repeater system is made up of a main receiver/transmitter/voter site located at Norton Audubon Hospital. The main hospital site is equipped with emergency backup generators which activate automatically during a power outage.
The W4CN repeater system is coordinated through the South-Eastern Repeater Association (SERA).
The main site
The main site is located at an elevation of 504 ft above sea level (not including the building or tower) and can be seen from Poplar Level rd at Norton Audubon Hospital. The site consists of a converted Motorola MSR2000 repeater. Ours has a 100W continuous duty amp (as opposed to 110W intermittent some came with). It also has the “duplex kit”, meaning extra filtering Motorola put on MSR2000’s set up as repeaters. Ours was originally set up as a remote base. These can typically be converted to repeater use without adding the filtering, but ARTS went ahead and put it in. The receiver board in the MSR2000 has the factory preamp. The controller is a Link Communications RLC-2A.
The receiver for the 440 MHz link from the hotel, is an MSR2000 UHF receiver card, in a second MSR2000 RF chassis. This receiver has its own PL decoder, a modified SP10 PL board. The main site also has an LDG RVS-8 voter that chooses which receiver site has the strongest reception of a given station.
Everything is tied together with a custom built audio interface board, and lots of custom cabling made by Ted Sims AI4LV. There’s also an old Kenwood commercial UHF radio used as a control receiver which allows us to give commands to the repeater through a 440 MHz link. We also have a Sinclair dual section isolator on the power amplifier output, and we use a Decibel Products cavity filter on the main receiver input, to try to cut down on intermod problems.
East receiver site (Out of service until May 2012)
The east remote receiver site was at the Louisville Marriott East, the site is currently undergoing a total renovation and we had to remove the receiver until the work is done which should be around May 2012. The remote site consisted of a Motorola MSR2000 repeater custom modified for use as a remote receiver and link. The radio chassis has a VHF receiver and a UHF transmitter, and no power amplifier.
The power output of the transmitter is about 0.5W and the controller is an MCC RC-100. There is a Decibel Products cavity filter on the receiver and the MSR2000 factory preamp is also installed.
Future sites
The ARTS club is considering adding at least two more remote receiver sites. The only one in planning is for the west end of Louisville and would cover the Dixie Hwy area if we can find a location for it.. Future sites will be similar to the east receiver and made up of Motorola MSR2000 repeaters with ICS-BASIC controllers set to about 0.5 watt.
If you have a site where a receiver could be placed and are willing to let ARTS use it, please contact Don Hoover
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