The WA7LAW Repeater

The Snohomish County Hams Club (WA7LAW) currently maintains two repeaters, one set to a VHF frequency and the other to a UHF frequency. You do not have to be a member of the club to use the basic functions of the repeater. However, if you do use the system regularly, we hope that you would consider becoming a member to support the system and help maintain and grow its usefulness in Snohomish County. A membership of $20 per year supports us and helps to keep this valuable resource operating. For more information on membership, click here.

Quick info

To hear the VHF Repeater tune your rig to 147.180 MHz. Use the standard +600 KHz (147.780 MHz) offset with a tone of 103.5 Hz to talk to the repeater.

To hear the UHF Repeater tune your rig to 444.575 MHz. use the standard +5 MHz (449.575 MHz) offset with a tone of 103.5 Hz to talk to the repeater.

VHF and UHF repeaters are currently NOT linked together.

Both our UHF and VHF repeaters are located in North Everett on top of the Bakerview Apartments at 2605 – 15th St.  The UHF Digital Fusion repeater is setup to receive on 449.575 MHz and transmit on 445.575 MHz with 25 watts. It requires a tone of 103.5 Hz (CTCSS) to access the repeater.  The Fusion functions are currently operating in Auto | Auto – meaning it will take digital or FM signals in, and repeat in Digital or FM mode outward as well.

The VHF machine is setup to receive on 147.780 MHz and transmit on 147.180 with 80 watts. It also requires a tone (CTCSS) of 103.5 Hz to access the repeater. At present, the VHF repeater’s Fusion function is set to operate in FM mode only. It will not respond to digital signals.

Note: There is a delay between first keying your microphone and transmission by the repeater. So press the PTT switch and count “one” to yourself before you start speaking.

Echolink is active and links to the VHF repeater.

The UHF and VHF repeaters are NOT linked and each operate stand-alone.

Antenna Tower on the roof of Bakerview Apartments

The repeater antennas are mounted on a 30' Rohn-25 tower on the 9th floor roof of the apartment building. In the picture at left, the new UHF antenna is mounted on the left end of the horizontal frame. The VHF antenna is on the top of the tower. The VHF APRS antenna is mounted on the right end of the horizontal frame. The dish on the right side of the horizontal frame is used for HAMWAN.

For more pictures of this installation project, click here.

Duplexer photos here

History / The “Rest” of the Story!

In 2015, the club purchased two Yaesu Fusion repeaters and installed them.

The repeater has several special features that are available to current members. Other features include Echolink, a digital audio recorder that records and plays back 15 seconds of audio so that you can hear what your transmitted audio sounds like, time and date read back, and other features that I need to look up. An information page on repeater function is available to current members from the club secretary.

EchoLink® software allows licensed Amateur Radio stations to communicate with one another over the Internet, using streaming-audio technology.  The program allows worldwide connections to be made between stations, or from computer to station, greatly enhancing Amateur Radio’s communications capabilities. To learn more, click here.

APRS (Automatic Packet Reporting System)

In September 2018 we placed in service the WA7LAW APRS node with the following specifications:

APRS Hardware:     Microsat WX3in1 Plus
APRS features:        Digipeater, IGate
Location:        WA7LAW Repeater site, Everett WA
Lat/Lon:  47.998000, -122.194622
Radio:            Kenwood TM-241A 2m mobile (50w) on 144.390
Antenna:        Hygain V2-R collinear 2m vertical

The purpose of this node is to provide club members and the community a platform to explore the various facets of APRS within the amateur radio hobby. There are many potential uses for APRS – both client devices and the IGate/Digipeater Microsat hardware installed on the node!

  • We can be found on www.aprs.fi here.
  • Stations heard via RF by the WA7LAW node during the last hour can be found here.  This gives an idea of how well/far our node can HEAR you on APRS!
  • Stations who were relayed into the Internet (APRS-IS) by the WA7LAW IGate are here.
  • Graphs of WA7LAW performance over time – here

Work yet to be done:  APRS broadcasts for WA7LAW repeater frequencies, net times, bulletins, etc.  Weather station?  Update station call from WA7LAW to WA7LAW-1.   What other ideas?

Additional info/tutorials/etc on APRS can be found here, here, here, or here!

Tools for viewing APRS data – aprs.fi, aprs-is (Windows / others), UI-View.net, Xastir, or YAAC

APRS station gear donated by Jim Hill W7ETE and Rob Salsgiver – NR3O