It would be fair to say my two major interests in ham radio are chasing DX and building things. Some of my on air friends have been surprised to learn I am into repeaters. It would be more accurate to say I am into building repeaters. I rarely talk on them unless I'm testing something new with the system or I'm off on some camping or hiking trip. I got into this partly out of an interest in advancing and promoting ham radio in Piscataquis County. I felt this area needed a repeater. The other motivation was it seemed a good excuse to build stuff. I had no idea how much I would learn from my repeater projects.

The first repeater looked more or less OK (if you didn't look inside!) but it was crude and proved to be less than reliable. I was always tinkering with it, mostly trying to improve the audio, eliminate annoying squelch crashes, etc. It did get better with time and near constant modification, but it is a wonder all the users put up with me and the repeater during those early years! A little less than four years after the repeaater went on the air, mother nature decided to "modify" it one night. It was one of the most intense thunderstorms we had seen in years. I got up the next morning to find the repeater transmitter sending out continuous carrier for no apparent reason, but it was very weak. I cancelled my plans for the day and headed straight to the repeater site. I found the controller and amplifier had been cooked. As near as I could figure, lightning got it through the AC power mains. I was able to get it back on the air quickly but it was never reliable after that. The controller kept freaking out and miscellaneous other glitches would occur out of the blue.

With very generous help from the Piscataquis Amateur Radio Club I was able to build a replacement repeater. Lightning actually did us all a favor that fateful night, as I took everthing I had learned from working with the first repeater and applied it to construction of the second. While not perfect, I think most will agree this second attempt is far better than the first!

Working with repeaters has been very rewarding and a tremendous learning experience. I wouldn't trade that experience for anything. I am certainly not the best person for the job, nor the most qualified, but I do what I can to provide repeater coverage for Piscataquis County.

Ultimately I would have liked to put another repeater in the Moosehead region linked to Stickney Hill, but that isn't possible financially or logistically. Repeater sites are very hard to come by and we are all extremely fortunate to have the use of the Stickney Hill location. What we have could be greatly enhanced by using one or more remote receivers linked back to the main site. That is a much less daunting task than another repeater but still very expensive. What is perhaps even more challenging than funding such a project is finding suitable sites for the receivers. I have accumulated some of the equipment necessary for such a system and with help am now searching for sites.