New Fusion Repeater In Service

The Rusk County Amateur Radio Club has recently upgraded its 146.780 FM repeater with a Yaesu, DR-1X Fusion repeater. The DR-1X Fusion repeater will be running in AMS, (Automatic Mode Select) and will operate in either the traditional Analog FM mode, or in the Yaesu C4FM Digital mode. This means that users who had the 146.780 analog repeater programmed into their mobile, base, or hand-held radios can still access the repeater with traditional analog FM transceivers.

However, users will want to program their radios with the 131.8 Hz. PL tone in the Encode and Decode modes. The PL tone was needed in the past to access the 146.780 repeater. Now it will be needed in the user’s radio to open the squelch in the user’s radio when the repeater is operating in the Analog FM mode. This will prevent the user from having to listen to the digital noise if their radio will not receive and decode the C4FM digital signal when the repeater is operating in the digital mode.

The new Fusion repeater is paired with a new SCOM 7300 repeater controller so it has some extended features and options that the old repeater’s controller did not offer. The new repeater is located at the same location as the club’s previous repeater but is operating a a slightly lower output power so the repeater’s coverage area may be slightly less than in the past.

If you have a Yaesu radio capable of operating in the C4FM digital mode try it with the new repeater and see how you like the C4FM digital mode, and as in the past any analog FM transceiver should work as well with the new repeater.