N5LSN

Central Arkansas Simulcast

442.700 MHz (+5.0MHz) CTCSS 118.8Hz

A growing wide-area analog 70cm amateur radio simulcast repeater system aimed at providing efficient auxiliary and backup communications throughout Central Arkansas.

Want to help expand coverage and fill the gaps in order to reach the goal? You can always donate or contact me if you want to help!

Repeater System Information

This repeater system combines multiple transmitters and receivers in Central Arkansas onto one single frequency by simulcasting and uplink voting, increasing coverage and ease of use while decreasing frequency band usage.

By programming this one frequency pair into your radio, you have programmed all of the repeaters in this system. When you use this system, you will automatically be using the repeater closest to you!

Think of this system like the towers that your cell phone operates on. You can move between areas without having to worry about changing the channel on your radio!

Features

Courtesy Tones

This repeater system is equipped with a variety of courtesy tones to help users understand the current state of the system and the source of transmissions. The following tones are used:

DTMF Controls

Please always identify yourself via callsign before executing commands.

Google Assistant Integration

This repeater system is equipped with a Google Assistant integration that allows you to ask for weather forecasts, news, and more. To use this feature, simply key up the repeater and say "OK Google", and immediately unkey. You should hear a short sound effect letting you know that Google is now listening. Quickly key back up and clearly state your query.

Example: "OK Google - what's the weather going to be like in Little Rock tomorrow?"

Please note that this is an experimental feature and may not always work as expected. Even when everything is working correctly, you will need a strong signal into the repeater along with good modulation for Google to be able to understand you.

System Considerations

This system relies on a data connection between each site location and a single master controller. This inherently introduces a noticeable delay between the time at which the system receives your audio, and the time at which the system re-transmits (repeats) that audio. This results in the user being able to hear a slight "echo" of the last bit of their transmission. This is completely normal, and to be expected on a system of this magnitude and complexity.

Given that this system is made up of several transmitters operating simultaneously, you may experience some noises on your receiving end that are not present on conventional single-site repeater systems. These noises may present as a "buzz" or a "whine", and are also completely normal. The following video showcases an example of these noises that you might encounter.

Failover & Redundancy

Given that this system relies on a data connection between each site location and a single master controller, there are failover processes in place in the event that any of these data connections are severed. If any site location in the CAS 700 system loses its connection to the master controller, that site location will automatically enter a “failover mode”, in which the machine will continue to operate as a basic, unlinked repeater on the same 442.700 frequency but different CTCSS tones until connection is restored. This means that if you are in Little Rock and you try to key up CAS 700 and notice it does not seem to be working, you can switch from the normal CAS 700 CTCSS tone to the Metro backup CTCSS tone to see if it has gone into failover mode. If you can, you should program each of the sites "failover mode" into your radio (for example "METRO BACKUP") so that you can still use them if the simulcast system encounters issues. The "failover" CTCSS tones for each site are listed below. Failover CTCSS is REQUIRED on the backup inputs and is available on the backup outputs as well.

CAS 700 BACKUP CTCSS

Each node in this system also employs some form of backup power. This may be in the form of battery, generator, or both.

This repeater system is open to all licensed amateur radio operators. Proper call sign ID is required.