Spotsylvania Fredericksburg Club

[WSAQ694]

Anyone in the 540 area looking to start a club? I'd like to get a decent repeater for the county so we can have coverage without stepping on anyone else's toes. I guess I'm looking for a group of people who have the "prepper" mentality but also are down to earth and have the same nerdy fascination with GMRS as I do.

-WSAQ694

[hfd376]

There's a repeater in Fredericksburg I think is part of a club. Have you looked into that one?

[WSAH999]

19 minutes ago, hfd376 said:

There's a repeater in Fredericksburg I think is part of a club. Have you looked into that one?

Another thing to add to this, if there is even an amateur radio club in your area, a lot of those guys usually also run GMRS.

[marcspaz]

I tried to put a repeater up in Stafford, near the hospital, and the county turned it down. They said I couldn't put up an antenna structure any taller than our building. I couldn't find a commercial site willing to donate tower space. 

I'm not interested in starting a club, but I may be able to spend some resources on getting the repeater up sometime this year. Depending on how much my health improves, of course. 

[WRXR360]

For the most part, Bull Run (650) and Warrenton (725) serve the Stafford/Fredericksburg/Spotsylvania area fairly well if using 10 watts or more. I have heard some folks in south Stafford and even Spotsylvania hit the Warrenton repeater on a 5 watt H/T at times, if they are in a good (unobstructed higher elevation) location.

There is a private repeater in the south Stafford area that can be raised from at least north Stafford on a H/T, but I rarely hear anybody use that repeater (monitoring all day with a scanner). Other hitable repeaters from north Stafford are DC's (700), Falls Church's (675), and Blue Mountain's (600) - a very good repeater that is hardly used.

There are other repeaters north of me that I can hear very well with the right atmospheric conditions but are not hitable because of my lack of good antenna height and heavily wooded back yard.