If you own gear for the upper end of UHF, you’ll want to try out Marty’s 1292.200 MHz repeater (1.2 GHz). It is on the air and working well as of March 30th. You’ll set your radio for 1292.200 MHz FM, with a minus 20MHz transmit offset.

With the help of Steve W6VM, Marty N8XPK installed a new 1.2GHz antenna on the Spring Hill site, and along with Jason N8JDM and John N8CD the repeater was put back on the air after being rebuilt and tuned up over the winter.

The repeater uses a pair of Yaesu FT-912R mobile radios – one on low power for transmit and one for receive, along with a home brew amplifier to provide continuous duty power output of around 15 watts. A bandpass filter and pre-amp are inline along with the duplexer. The system is controlled by a Raspberry Pi running the HamVOIP Allstar code and a DMK Engineering URIx sound card, and the repeater is on the group’s metro microwave-linked IP network for availability via Allstar as Node 48987. You can find what’s connected to the repeater on the Allstar site. The repeater is currently running normal FM with carrier squelch (no PL required), and will beacon an ID and time at the top of each hour.

There aren’t many 1.2GHz capable radios on the market at the moment, and you’ll find most hams will be using an Alinco DJ-G7 for portable use or an older mobile from Kenwood or Yaesu. There are also a few base-style radios available for 1.2 GHz such as the new Icom IC-9700.

The new repeater joins N8XPK’s 444.2 and 147.135 repeaters, the KE8LDH 442.5125 digital repeater, and the WW8TF “AKRON” APRS digipeater at the site