D-STAR Digital Voice / Digital Data Comes to Richmond

Richmond's first and only digital repeater went on the air on January 28, 2008 when the W4FJ  analog repeater on 147.255 MHz was taken off the air, and an Icom D Star repeater was installed. 

On November 9, 2010, this repeater was relocated to the roof of a building in downtown Richmond with a Diamond X 50 antenna at 430 feet above sea level, over 300 feet above average terrain.

 On February 8, 2011, a UHF module on 443.7125 MHz was installed using a Comet antenna.

 On April 29, 2011, two permanent antennas were installed for the D Star repeaters.  On VHF, we installed a new Decibel Products DB 224 that was donated to the Club.  On UHF, we installed a DB 420 that was donated to the Club by the RATS organization. 

 These new antennas appear to be filling in some holes around town, and hopefully will improve performance at the outer limits of our coverage area which extends from about Doswell to the north, south of Petersburg , well into New Kent County to the east and Gum Springs to the west.  Base stations in the Williamsburg area was modest antennas are able to access the repeaters.

The final phase of the D Star project is to connect the repeaters to the D Star gateway.  Significant progress has been made on that recently, and we expect the gateway to be operational in the summer of 2011.

 The RARC D Star net meets Wednesday nights at 8:00pm on 147.255 MHz.  Please join us, and in the meantime, enjoy the areas only digital repeaters.

Ron, Mike and Allan - Preparing the DB Products antenna for installation

The view from W4FJ