The PSRG is Fifty Years Old ! Founded in 1972, the Puget Sound Repeater Group has been serving hams in the area for fifty years. In 2022, we celebrate our golden jubilee. Join us at the Annual General Meeting to hear from our founders and celebrate with us !
Subscribe to be notified of new posts! —->
Coming Events:
Field Day 2022 will be in person Friday, June 24-Sunday June 26. Venue is still TBD but likely to be South Seattle College, at the north end of the campus (opposite end from years past). This will be a combined effort by Seattle ACS, West Seattle Amateur Radio Club, and Puget Sound Repeater Group.
Dates are:
Friday, June 24 (setup)
Saturday, June 25 (on-air operating, public education events, group potluck dinner)
Sunday, June 26 (on-air operating, teardown)
The organizers need to know who is likely to participate and what your roles you are interested in filling. Please fill out the Availability and Interest Assessment with your plans for participation.
Rain or Shine Net Season 4 Episode 3 is Sunday May 29th. Join your ham friends in 3D at Mukilteo’s Lighthouse Park. Take a beach walk, watch a train or two go by, tour the lighthouse, check into the net and have a doughnut. There is a paid parking lot at the park (reasonable) and free parking across the tracks at the Rose Hill Community Center. We have two shelters reserved so rain should not be an issue.
Mukilteo Lighthouse Park
609 Front St, Mukilteo, WA 98275
Map link: Lighthouse Park Map
Park video: https://youtu.be/OOzHBaNlZaI
Call-in frequency is 146.550 simplex.
Sea-Pac Ham Convention and ARRL Northwestern Division Convention will take place June 3-5 in Seaside, OR. In addition, The 2022 SEA-PAC QSO Party is being planned for the weekend before SEA-PAC, on Saturday, May 28, 2022. Details can be found on the Sea-Pac web site.
Of course, the ARRL Field Day will be held on the last weekend of June. Information about PSRG’s participation in Field Day will be posted as the event approaches.
The PSRG Annual Picnic is planned for July 23. Details will be published as the date approaches.
A recording of our recent educational meeting, on Saturday May 14th, led by Clint Bradford, K6LCS is now available: How to Work Amateur Satellites with Your HT
Here are some details:
You do not need 100W of transmit power nor expensive antenna arrays to work the FM voice amateur satellites! Many hams already have the necessary equipment to “work the birds.” This presentation walks you through ALL the steps needed to successfully work several ham satellites – including the International Space Station.
Clint K6LCS has been a ham since 1994, and found his niche in the hobby: working amateur satellites with minimal equipment and telling ALL about it! He has served as liaison between NASA, the ARISS team, and schools coordinating amateur radio contacts between the International Space Station and students (and also orchestrated a wildly successful ARISS contact).
For reference materials, Clint has created a support Web site at work-sat.com. The Web site has become a one-stop source for ALL the citations and equipment recommendations and software suggestions made in the presentation.
Professionally, Clint was sales manager for ADI/Premier Communications/Pryme, worked for a Motorola commercial two-way dealer a couple of years, and for Ham Radio Outlet a couple more. He resides in Jurupa Valley, California, with his wife, Karen, and their rescued lab, Freja.
The PSRG 6m repeater is now fully operational! The transmitter is located at Capitol Park and the Receiver is at Beacon Hill. A second receiver has now been located at Cougar Mountain.
Repeater output is 52.87 MHz, input is 51.17 MHz, and it requires a tone of 103.5 Hz.
The 6 meter repeater is linked to the 2 meter repeater for the Monday night check-in net.
Although we are currently reviewing the site to make it as accessible as possible, it is hard for those without particular limitations to anticipate what problems users might have in accessing parts of the site. If you notice something that could be an obstacle, please let us know. Contact webmaster@psrg.org.
In light of the uncertainty about when large group gatherings will be safe again, it is not a good use of volunteer time to plan for our normal events. Board Meetings and Educational Meetings will be held online until further notice. (This policy was renewed at the August 14, 2021 board meeting.)
We have added a Photo Gallery page to the website. We are seeking photos of PSRG events beginning with 2018 Field Day, especially the Annual Dinner, Annual Meeting and 2018 Picnic. If you have photos to submit, email them K7RAG@psrg.org. (Note, if you have trouble sending them, email Rich for help.)
See the information page at N7CFO for classes and testing information N7CFO Licensing Information Page
Weekly Simplex Voice Net Every Saturday on 146.550 MHz! The Weekly Simplex Voice Net happens Every Saturday night at 8 PM. The usual hosts are Dan (KB7RYY) and Amy (KB9IQX). Drop by and say hello!
From Doug (KD7DK): With material help from Randy (W3RWN) and labor from Casey (AE7SL), the Puget Sound Repeater Group has installed its test DMR repeater at Capitol Park. This repeater is linked to and carries the core PNW-DMR (Pacific NorthWest DMR Group) talkgroups. Please visit their website pnwdigital.net* for more information on the PNW-DMR network, talkgroups, user technical guidelines, and operating best practices.
If you are going to operate DMR in this region, please join the PNW-DMR notification group so you can receive operational notifications and be informed of network changes.
Now the details so you can program your radios: Our repeater is new so its not in the existing codeplugs which you can download from the PNW-DMR website.
RX 440.775 / TX 445.775 (+5.0) Color code 2
Callsign WW7PSR
This is a dedicated narrowband (12.5KHz) channel.
DMR Digital transmissions only.The following talkgroups are supported:
Time slot 1:
Seattle 1 (310477)
Wash 1 (3153)
Local 1 (3181)
PNW 1 (3187)
PS1 (3190)
Parrot (9998) – This is a playback test talkgroup.Time slot 2:
Seattle 2 (310534)
Wash 2 (103153)
Local 2 (3166)
Tac 1 (8951)
Tac 2 (8952)
Tac 8 (8958)
PNW 2 (103187)
PNWR (31771)
PS2 (103190)
Audio Test (9999)
The equipment for this repeater is a Yaesu DR-1X operating at 20 watts into a modest gain antenna. The digital modem is a Micro-Node Teensy-MMDVM connected to a Raspberry Pi 3 running MMDVM-Host and DMR-Gateway to interconnect to the PWN-DMR 2-slot gateway, known as Rex. This is not the final configuration but one the group could launch quickly, and help us gain more information to inform our final equipment choices.
If you have not operated DMR before, please take some time to read some of the information for first time users before keying up.
We have been really pleased with the initial coverage reports. Please let us know how you find the coverage. We are currently running 5 watts, but that was a configuration mistake and it will shortly be set to 20 watts which will probably be the final setting for the test repeater. Send questions and observations to tech@psrg.org.
*Also please note that PNW-DMR is in the process of moving their web presence to a new hosting site and that some of the URLs referenced above may change in the future.
PSRG added a “Voting System” in October 2018. This is a network of remote receivers scattered around the coverage area to enhance the coverage for people calling into the repeater. Although the system is one directional, i.e., the remote units can receive your signal, the output of the repeater still comes from Queen Anne. A more detailed explanation of how the system works has been provided by Doug Kingston, KD7DK: PSRG Voting System. PSRG Voting System.
You can look at the strength of the signals being received by each of the receivers in real time at the PSRG Supermon page.
