At the November 2022 club meeting, the membership approved the plan to upgrade the radio system for 147.39 MHz. The Bridgecom BCR-50V will be replaced with a Kenwood NXR-710. The club also purchased a second NXR as a warm spare.
The club decided to invest a significant portion of the club’s on-hand funds at the close of 2022 to purchase the NXRs to future-proof our repeater system. SARA is proud to operate one of the premier repeaters in northeast Ohio – both from a coverage perspective and an activity perspective. However amateur interest in analog FM does not generate any meaningful revenue for the commercial radio manufacturers and the future of amateur-friendly repeaters is in doubt. Commercial systems such as those provided by Motorola and Kenwood are concentrating on their digital trunked radio system technologies such as P25 and NXDN. This is leading to them dropping features and compatibility with amateur radio technologies. The Kenwood NXR is going end-of-sale from Kenwood shortly and it’s last model Kenwood makes with external control capability of interest to the amateur community. SARA decided to purchase two units looking at a 10-15 horizon of service and supportability of the SARA Repeater System.
The new system will go live sometime in December or early January.