Northville Amateur Radio Association
A little history!
Introduction: The repeater system was first started about 1994 in New Milford with the 146.775 repeater (now 146.730). This repeater soon became two when we installed the 441.850 repeater in its first home in Pawling, NY. Both of these repeaters existed separately (not linked) for several years and served two different areas. The 441.850 repeater was the first in the system to have a link to another repeater (the KB1AEV system). Soon after, the 441.850 repeater landed at its present day home in Washington CT, was linked to the 146.730 repeater to start the linked system (the 146.730 repeater also had linking to the KB1AEV system at that time). The next repeater on the air was the 224.320 repeater in Warren, followed by the 441.550 repeater in Torrington, then the 441.650 repeater in Waterbury, and lastly the 146.955 advanced technologies repeater in Bethlehem. The system has linking redundancy to the KB1AEV system via RF (multiple transmitters) and via Echolink (voice over IP).
Here's the scoop:
The system consists of six repeaters linked together via RF. It is now possible to be in a place like Torrington and talk on a portable radio to New Milford, Danbury, Waterbury, and well beyond. If the link should get broken on the system, there is enough overlap in the three wide area repeaters to be able to cover most the entire area served by all six using a mobile radio to access the system.
Site 1 - New Milford - 146.730 PL 192.8 or 77.0 - This repeater located in the Northeast section of New Milford covers the Southern Litchfield county and most of Fairfield county areas. The coverage includes many towns such as New Milford, Washington, Bridgewater, Roxbury, Brookfield, Danbury, Litchfield, Redding, Newtown, Bethel, Ridgefield, Morris, Bethlehem, New Fairfield, Sherman, Gaylordsville, Kent, Weston, Monroe, Sandy Hook, and many more. This repeater is also usable well into New York state, and out onto Long Island. This repeater also has a remote receiver (located at the Washington site with 441.850). This receiver requires a PL of 192.8 Hz to access, and provides much better coverage compared to the PL 77.0 receiver which experiences interference at times.
Site 2 - Washington - 441.850 PL 77.0 - This repeater is located in Washington, just south of the "depot" area. The repeater provides coverage in the surrounding area (very similar to New Milford) of Morris, Washington, Kent, Warren, Bridgewater, Roxbury, Brookfield, Danbury, Litchfield, Bethel, Newtown, New Milford, Gaylordsville, New Fairfield, Sherman, Monroe, Sandyhook, etc. This site provides the primary linking system and all audio from every site passes through here (including Echolink). Provisions for backup audio paths for the linking are being, or have been made at other sites in the event of a failure here.
Site 3 - Warren - 224.320 PL 77.0 - This repeater is located very near Warren center in a very high location. This repeater provides mobile coverage in such a large area that it would take a long time to research the towns it covers. This site provides mobile coverage from northwest Connecticut all the way down to the New Canaan/Stamford area of Connecticut, and very far west into New York state. This repeater does not play to the east beyond the Waterbury and Cheshire areas very well. We are told that we can be heard very well out onto long island (even eastern long island), and beyond.
Site 4 - Torrington (Harwinton) - 441.550 PL 77.0 - This repeater was placed in service to provide "nitch" coverage in the downtown Torrington area. It does not serve very far beyond that area. No other repeater in our system provides anywhere near the good coverage quality in the greater downtown Torrington area as you can get on this repeater. This repeater is not generally very usable south of the CSP barracks in Litchfield, or north and west of Goshen center.
Site 5 - Waterbury (Watertown) - 441.650 PL 77.0 - This repeater provides coverage to the downtown Waterbury area and well beyond. This repeater provides good coverage up into Litchfield on RT 63 and 8, south beyond Beacon Falls, and to the east such as Cheshire, Southington, Bristol, Farmington. This repeater provides a good outlet for amateurs just outside of our main area to be able to access the system.
Site 6 - Morris/Bethlehem - 146.955 DPL 343 - This repeater provides coverage north and east of the site. This repeater can be heard from Waterbury/Cheshire on up through central Mass and into western Mass. This is the newest addition to the NA1RA system. This repeater came to us from its original owner (Art NF1E). This repeater has the name A.R.T. for two reasons. First reason is the obvious one ... the previous owners name. The second reason is that A.R.T. stands for "Advanced Radio Technologies". This repeater is narrowband (meaning half the frequency deviation is used to access this site, and it uses half of the standard "wideband" deviation to get back to you). This narrow band repeater can be accessed with many modern amateur radios by just programming them and turning on the narrow mode option. Lastly, this repeater may be the first one that sees a conversion to a digital voice platform at some point as further experimentation is done.
The entire system can be split apart (de-linked) if the repeaters are needed separately, or they can be linked to the KB1AEV system via two separate redundant RF paths. Linking is also possible worldwide via Echolink utilizing voice over IP. Also of note is the ability of the system to pass some digital modes such as packet, PSK31, SSTV, and more. This ability is mostly due to the nature of the system audio path that is relatively flat in response and unclipped throughout the entire link path.