I got my amateur radio licence almost seven years ago now. That seems unbelievable. I am by no means very technical, but I very much enjoy being part of an extremely friendly community.
Living where I do, I am fairly close to the Isle of Wight. This whole area is a hot bed of licensed amateurs, there are lots of us in the area. One of the reasons why I know such a large number of them is, I think down to a remarkable facility that is available to us amateurs.
It’s called a repeater, and it has its own callsign; GB3IW. When an amateur transmits, the repeater receives the signal, amplifies and re-broadcasts it. It is very well positioned and maintained and as result. It has a remarkable reach. Easily from Brighton to Taunton, and inland to Winchester and Liphook. That’s quite a large area. It is a most impressive piece of kit.
Sadly, the owner of GB3IW wishes to retire. It takes a fair bit of effort on his part to maintain the repeater he quite often spends a fair bit of many of his weekends maintaining the repeater. So it is entirely understandable that at some point he would want at some point to stop it. It appears that we will reach that point in May.
Now, steps are being taken to ensure continuity of the repeater. But it may not work. So we talking about alternatives. But, it’s fun. The repeater is fun. I will be very sad to see it go, and I sincerely hope that it gets sorted.
Bills Posts 