Elves please be there by 12:30PM
I tested the 975 repeater coverage all along the Crabtree trail corridor including ... Pine Valley, Grouse Lake, Ground Hog Mdw, Louse Canyon, Wood Lake, Latora Lake, Huckleberry lake, Gem Lake, Piute Lake..
This 975 repeater gives excellent coverage with 5 watt Hand Held Transceiver .. occasionally you have to take 5 minutes to climb up a nearby granite rock to get coverage such as at Louse Canyon and Piute Lakes.. but on the ridge overlooking Huckleberry Lake I talked with Phil Fish using just one watt :-) ... How about that. As you know the Forest Service Repeaters Tone 1, Tone 7, Tone 5 and Tone 9 provide almost no coverage in central emigrant wilderness including at trail heads.
We still have very little radio coverage of any kind (Forest Service or Ham) in Northern Emigrant Wilderness due to the 9000' Cooper Peak/Eagle Peak/Three Chimney's Ridge that blocks radio coverage West to East. However when you get up on any of the passes (Brown Bear, Mosquito Pass, Big Sam, Granite Dome, Bond Pass) or the high elevation lakes & meadows & valleys (Upper Relief, Emigrant Mdw, Summit Mdw, Snow Lake, Bigelow Lk) or get East of the 3 Chimney's and Granite Dome Rock structures then you can get the 975 repeater. Right now the best radio coverage for Northern Emigrant Wilderness is Tone 5 USFS repeater on Mount Reba or the summer only Tone 4 repeater on Relief Peak.
Anyway.. thought you would be interested..Wow.. are we ever excited.. I am keeping some of the Nordic Ski Patrol and SAR folks informed because this may solve some of their communication problems if they decide to use this repeater and get their Ham Operators License.
McJim
NOTE:
TCARES has located a repeater ( K6TUO on 147.975 MHz,(-) offset, CTCSS 100hz ) to a location which will better serve areas of the county which were not covered by a repeater.
The primary coverage areas for this repeater are Wilderness Areas which are patrolled Summer and Winter by a group of Volunteers.. TCARES suggests adding this repeater to your Radio and monitor for Emergency traffic.
The Wilderness Protocol recommends that those stations able to do so should monitor the primary (and secondary, if possible) frequency every three hours starting at 7 AM, local time, for 5 minutes (7:00-7:05 AM, 10:00-10:05 AM, ..., 10:00-10:05 PM). Additionally, those stations that have sufficient power resources should monitor for 5 minutes starting at the top of every hour, or even continuously.
NOTE*** Placing 146.52 MHz , 52.525, 223.5, 446.0 and 1294.5 MHz in your Scanner would help..Carl
Priority transmissions should begin with the LiTZ signal. ( LONG TONE ZERO )
CQ-like calls (to see who is out there) should not take place until four minutes after the hour.