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British Columbia Frequency Modulation Communications Association
Our Equipment
Mt. Seymour Site:
In 1996, we undertook a major project to upgrade our feedlines between the original shack and the tower. Click here to see more about that project.
In 2007, we were forced to move out of the shack we had been in for 35+ years. While it was sad on one hand, we are very pleased to still be in relatively the same spot. See details on the BCFMCA's biggest project (at that time) here.
That move put all of our equipment is in our own building adjacent to our previous home. It was approximately 30m from the base of the tower.
In 2015, we were forced to move again in order to make room for MSRL to expand their maintenance building. This massive undertaking required moving our whole building, equipment and all, from by the MSRL maintenance building, up to where our tower is. You can read all bout THAT project here.
Our building is now located directly adjacent to our tower. It required re-cabling ALL of our antennas, as well as running a dedicated underground power feed to supply us. One of the many advantages we were able to realize is shortening each cable run by about 25mr, reducing loss by about a dB.
On Mt. Seymour we have a total of eight repeaters. ALL of them are capable of operating on emergency power. To see more about each machine or our emergency power system, click on the links below.
In addition, two of the repeaters are also connected to the IRLP (www.irlp.net) network. We are node 1694 on that network. More information on using IRLP on our system can be found here.
One of our repeaters, VE7RPT-220, is now using AllStar as the basis of its repeater contol (as a private node) running on a Raspberry Pi. More information on this configuration can be found here.
| System Overview | ||
| ON AC! | Emergency Power System | |
| ONLINE | VE7RPT AllStarLink Hub | Analog (AllStar 435450) |
| ONLINE | VE7RPT 146.940 MHz (-600 kHz) (PL 136.5Hz*) | Analog (IRLP 1694) (AllStar 435451) |
| ONLINE | VE7RPT 224.300 MHz (-1.6 MHz) (PL 156.7Hz*) | Analog (AllStar) |
| ONLINE | VE7RPT 443.525 MHz (+5 MHz) (PL 136.5Hz*) | Analog (IRLP 1694) (AllStar 435452) |
| ONLINE | VE7RAG 1291.94 MHz (-20 MHz) | D-STAR DV Port A |
| ONLINE | VE7RAG 1251.94 MHz | D-STAR DD Port A |
| ONLINE | VE7RAG 147.020 MHz (+600 kHz) | D-STAR DV Port C |
| ONLINE | VE7RAG 443.400 MHz (+5 MHz) | DMR/MotoTRBO |
| ONLINE | VE7LAN 145.070 MHz (+600 kHz) |
*Encode only. Repeater transmits PL, but does not require it for access.
We have had some theoretical studies done to predict the coverage of some of our repeaters, as well as the improvement of adding a voted receiver to VE7RPT-VHF. See the coverage page for further details.
We have live temperatures reporting from the site, check out the telemetry here.
Burnaby Site:
BCFMCA has one other site in the Lower Mainland. This site is located on the top of the Metrotower II office tower in Burnaby, BC. At that location, we have another UHF repeater that has excellent coverage and also can be operated on emergency power. To see more about this machine, please click on the link below.
Iron Mountain Site:
In 2020, the BCFMCA acquired the ex-IPARN callsign for the VE7IRN repeater on Iron Mountain in Merritt. Most of the equipment on site was in very poor condition, and the repeater barely working.
On July 24, 2020. A "new" repeater was installed and put on the air. It uses a Raspberry Pi-based AllStarLink controller, and is connected to the AllStarLink network as Node 435454.
The repeater should be usable from the top of Larsen Hill to Helmer on the Coquihalla, and from Merritt to Pennask Summit on Highway 97C. Coverage also extends along Highway 5A (south of Aspen Grove towards Princeton and Merritt out towards Nicola Lake), as well as west along Highway 8. It is also usable in Logan Lake.
See the AllStar Status Site for LIVE status.