GB3CQ – 10 metre UK repeater 29.630

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West Sussex Coastal Repeater Group

GB3CQ
Ten metre repeater 29.630.
Worthing, West Sussex UK.

Technical Information:

Licensed since 28th May 2021 and first switched on at 3pm on 10th June 2021. This coincided with excellent propagation conditions and enabled stations over most of Europe to be heard on the repeater.

GB3CQ is the only operational in-band 10 meter repeater in the UK. It is experimental and the repeater group are constantly trying out different hardware.

RX: Yaesu FT-8900R
TX: Yaesu FT-8900R
Logic: AllStar
TX Antenna: Sirio GPE 5/8
RX Antenna: 5/8 wave
Power Out: 11 dBW
Repeater Keeper: G4WTV
Location: IO 90 SU
Repeater Output: 29.630 MHz
Repeater Input: 29.530 MHz
CTCSS tone 88.5Hz (on tx and rx)

Information about CTCSS.

Repeater status:

Beacon on air

Currently, it uses a Yaesu FT-8900r for TX and RX. Most, if not all 2 meter and 70 cm repeaters, use a single antenna for TX and RX with Duplex Cavities to enable single site use. This is impossible on the 10 meter band with only 100kHz split, so the TX and RX sites are separated by approximately 2 km. All 10 meter repeaters operate in this manner and have some sort of audio link between the two sites. Some use an Internet link and others use UHF or Microwave radio links.

The Logic:

The Logic, which controls the transmitter and allows for a voice ID every 15 minutes, using a Raspberry Pi, currently uses AllStar-voip for the Internet connection between the receive station and that of the transmitter, some 2km apart.

A relatively undocumented feature is the ability to use an audio file instead of the usual courtesy tones of a ‘K’ or beeps. AllStar is unable to play the usual .MP3 or .WAV files and only a low sample rate of 8k mono can be used, so the audio file needs to be resampled with a program such as Audacity. This has been implemented on the repeater and it now plays a ‘ding-dong’ tune between overs. Several of the more DX repeaters that have been heard here on the South Coast (New York, Canada and Moscow), use this tone to indicate that the repeater is ready for the next over. Other repeater keepers may be interested in explicit details on how to implement this feature, please contact the repeater keeper for GB3CQ (G4WTV) for further information.

CTCSS tone 88.5Hz is required to access the repeater.

Propagation reports are welcome and should be directed to the repeater keeper G4WTV – [email protected]

Below:  Receiver on the left and transmitter on the right.

Below:  RX node controller on the left and TX node controller on the right.

Below: Receiving antenna, left, and the transmitting antenna, right. Both 5/8 wave.

 

Update 7/11/23:

The repeater is now linked to our local 2 metre repeater GB3RW. This will allow people who don’t have a 10 metre radio or aerial to work through the 10 metre repeater. This system has been adopted by many repeaters world wide. Hopefully, it will encourage people to use the repeaters more often. A station from Florida has worked through the repeater, also one from Greece, so things are looking good.

Please note:

I believe there’s been some confusion about how the linking works so… If you are local to the repeaters, it’s best not to listen to them both at the same time. Either use GB3RW, as you normally would. Or, use GB3CQ, as you normally would.

Watch the video. Repeaters for beginners:

I’ve created a video here which might help newcomers to grasp the idea of repeaters.