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Sparks says "73!" The Voice of Nelson County Amateur Radio • Bardstown • Cox's Creek • High Grove • Fairfield • • Bloomfield • Chaplin • New Hope • • New Haven • Boston • Rooster Run • • Samuels • Deatsville • Club Call KB4KY Home About KARS KARS Nets Become a KARS member Bardstown repeater info Local scanner Frequencies Links Contact Us VHF/UHF Coverage Two repeaters are located in Nelson County: FREQUENCY OFFSET TONE REMARKS 145.47 MHz -600 kHz 151.4 Hz Split receive, transmit sites. 443.00 MHz +5 MHz none   The Bardstown Repeater The Bardstown repeater is supported partly by KARS, but mostly by the efforts of some very dedicated and community-minded hams. Among them are: Tom & Mary Jo Kruer, Jerry Parrott, N4PEI; Ed Fowler, KC4RIY; Steve Arnold, WB4GGH; Bennie Brooks, N4SQA; and the list goes on (with apologies to anyone I've omitted). For 2004, KARS is hoping to make progress toward improving the repeater's coverage area with a new receiver location. The Repeater's History The first local repeater in modern times (circa 1989) was owned by Jim Brooks/N4SRT. This homebrew repeater was picked up from the 3898 Trader's Net, and featured a Hamtronics receiver and VHF Engineering transmitter and controller, and first went on the air in the backyard of N4SRT's Bardstown home on 147.39 MHz. The repeater was later moved to the roof of Bardstown High School. Once in place at the high school, it was discovered that the repeater coordinator made an incorrect assumption when he doled out the 147.39 MHz frequency for the then-new Bardstown repeater. A LaGrange ham was control operator of a repeater on 147.39 prior to the Bardstown repeater's existence, but this ham was leaving the area and taking his repeater with him. The coordinator assumed no repeater would replace the LaGrange one, as no one had contacted him yet. As we found out, this assumption was incorrect, and this fact came to light once the Bardstown repeater was running atop the high school -- and hams operating in the north end of Nelson County were bringing up both repeaters. After a new set of crystals was installed (and some help from the hams both here and in LaGrange), the repeater frequency was re-coordnated and changed to 145.47 MHz. Sometime about 1993, the repeater was replaced with a converted GE commercial unit. Rather than use the existing duplexers, it was decided that separating the receive and transmit sites would work best for the new repeater and its substantially higher output power. The receive and transmit sites are linked by a 440 MHz link; the receive site is at N4PEI's home in the Botland community; the transmit site is located on a farm he owns a few miles away. The repeater worked well for a good many years, but the receiver and transmit link gear was changed out several years ago by Tom/AE4NU with a controller and Radio Shack HTs for receivers and exciters. The repeater still has no duplexer, but the seperated transmit/receive site still works quite well. info@noinkmedia.com © 1999-2004 www.noinkmedia.com