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This is the first account of a WA6TDD event from a users. I hope itwont be the last. This one is from Steve Jensen, W6RHM. (Ed.)
I thought you might be interested in the story of how the repeater split(146.400/147.435) came about. Today of course it seems a bit odd but all ofthis happened long before the 2 Meter band plan came out. At the time ofthe installation on Mt. Wilson, (sometime in 1962 I think) the only otherrepeater on the air was Art Gentry’s K6MYK machine. Its input was 145.180and its output was 146.980 (I still have the crystals). This one was all AMat the time.
As FM was just starting to become popular, Burt wanted to accomodate that aswell and he had an idea to have two inputs, AM and FM for the Mt. Wilsonrepeater. I was involved in a survey of frequencies on Mt. Wilson using aStoddart NM-30 receiver in conjunction with a my Heathkit Pawnee as I recallto find a repeater pair for Burt that was relatively free of intermod. Wedecided on 146.400 for the output and 147.425 for the input. Then it wasdecided that there should be two inputs centered around 147.425 at +/- 10kHz which gave rise to 147.435 for the AM input and 147.415 for the FMinput. At the time all of this conversation was going on, the repeater wasput on the air as an AM repeater using the two frequencies idendified forthe AM operation with the plan being to implement the FM operation later.The output was always on 146.400. Well, as FM grew rapidly in popularityduring those days and AM diminished, what actually happened was the old AMpair became the present FM pair and the other pair was never used. When therepeater changed hands after Burt gave it away, the input and output waslater reversed to its present configuration using 147.435 as the output and146.400 as the input. (The reason for that is unknown).
73, Steve Jensen, W6RHM
This page is under construction, we are looking for material to add to this site. If you have any pictures or interesting stories about the WA6TDD AM repeater or the early WR6ABE FM repeater at Mount Wilson Please send them to WB6MVP Web Master and Editor.
Last update was 01-03-2014
Some of the clip art is from Zed Zed.
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