SPARCS Ham Radio Emergency Communication

STARS Emergency Powered WINLINK Digi-peater - W5RGV-1

Fully intended for WinLink RMS Packet Gateway the South Texas Amateur Radio Society (STARS) of the lower Rio Grand Valley in Texas operates a digital repeater station on 145.01 MHz simplex for those stations in Cameron and Hidalgo County who cannot reach a RMS Packet Gateway station directly. The digi-peater is located at the Blue Town commercial radio tower facility, the location provided to SPARCS by radio station KVMV of McAllen, in association with the STARS’ 146.70 MHz EmComm repeater.

The Valley is fortunate to have primary and multiple secondary RMS Packet Gateway stations now operating and established for WinLink use, “when all else fails”.  All hams who are capable of operating WinLink are welcomed and encouraged to operate. The Digi-peater is in operation to “assist” those stations outside of the range of the RMS Gateways due to the fact that all of the Gateway antennas are  lower to the ground than would normally be desired and require “digi-peating” to compare coverage to the voice repeater systems operated by STARS. 

SPARCS wishes to thank the following hams for contributing their equipment, some portion of their high speed Internet backbone, and a great deal of time maintaining their WinLink RMS Gateway nodes for operations in Emergency connditions:

AE5R-10  MAIN GATEWAY NODE  24/7 w/generator backup - Harlingen Police Dept.
K5RAV-10  BACKUP operational 24/7  K5RAV-Harlingen - emergency power
N5RGV-10 BACKUP operational 24/7  N5RGV-Brownsville