New Mt. Oso Repeater on 146.895

In mid-December, a new repeater was placed into service atop Mt. Oso in Stanislaus County. The repeater, at 3,300 feet, offers wide coverage, though its location on the hill results in some considerable nulls. Further, the antenna in use limits up-close coverage (such as in Tracy). Both of these issues are being addressed but will take time to solve.

This location was made available by John LaRue, K6JKL, and Keith Bussman, the site owner. This is the same site where a CARLA UHF system resides.

The repeater is on 146.895, down offset, and requires a 114.8 PL tone. It also transmits the tone, allowing the user to select CTCSS or “Tone Squelch” to silent any interference on the channel. Other nearby repeaters are located in Chico and Santa Clara. If you can hear this repeater, you should not be able to hear the others.

Note that the CW ID is transmitted without a PL tone, meaning that if you have PL decode turned on you will not hear the repeater ID. Right now, the repeater is set to ID every 9 minutes as a beacon to help determine if it is causing interference to other repeaters.

Plans are underway to improve the antenna, raise the power somewhat and purchase a new controller. At present, using the built-in controller, the repeater has no courtesy tone and IDs on CW only. If the IDs bother you, turn on PL decode and you won’t hear them.

For information, the N5FDL repeaters — Tracy, Mt. Oso (now) and Ripon (again, soon) will all operate with a 114.8 PL tone, as does the WB6ASU 147.090 system.