News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
The Plateau Amateur Radio Club installed a radio repeater in Pickett County to provide ham radio coverage for the area.
Vice President Joel Poston said the repeater reaches from Burkesville, Kentucky to Putnam County and covers Pickett, Overton, and parts of Clay County. Poston said the repeater will allow local radio operators to assist in storm weather and emergency reports.
“It’s an excellent backup form of communication,” Poston said. “It operates analog so any scanner or other radio that you can tune to that frequency would be able to receive it.”
Poston said there are multiple radio-certified 911 operators in the area who could use the system in emergency situations as well. Poston said a radio license is required to speak on the frequency but anyone is allowed to listen in.
Poston said the repeater’s frequency is 146.820 Mhz.
“It’s on a one-hundred foot tower and it’s in a building and it operates autonomously,” Poston said. “We can communicate with it through our radio. We can punch certain codes in in a radio and make it do certain things, but basically it’s up there all by itself.”
Poston said the repeater has a backup power system that should allow it to operate for about ninety days on its own. Poston said there are a lot of additional features the club still has to set up for the repeater, such as internet and app connectivity.
“Another feature is you can link those (repeaters) together,” Poston said. “That’s another thing we’re working on, to where when you talk on one your coverage would expand greatly by linking both of those together.”
Poston said his club uses another repeater that covers from Lebanon to Crossville and Monticello, Kentucky to the northern edge of Spencer. Poston said the new repeater in Pickett County came about thanks to a grant from the Upper Cumberland Electric Membership Corporation.
