The W4AVA repeater system is part of a broader linked system. Dave Jordan (WA3GIN) has been heading up the work on this as a labor of love for quite some time.
He has managed to put together a relatively nice linked repeater system with a couple of great friends down in the Northern Neck, Jeff KC8VFN and Andrew AF4AH, to provide awesome VHF coverage along the Potomac River from north of Great Falls to the mouth of the Potomac river and ChesapeakeBay (see attached). We fondly refer to the system as the Potomac River Repeater System (PRRS). We assume the coverage exceeds 10,000 square miles.
This linked system provides improved coverage to potential East and Southern evacuation routes from Arlington, NOVA and the NCR. It also provides hand-held VHF 5 watt radio access from the NCR to the Virginia State Emergency Operations Center in Richmond, VA.
There was nothing like this system in existence before 9/11 leaving the NCR vulnerable from an AUX COM capability perspective and to my knowledge this linked system is the only such system serving the NCR. There has been no downtime of the W4AVA repeater that was unplanned since it was activated 17+ yrs ago! The other pics are of our repeater maintenance facility here in King George. This is where we calibrate the transceivers, tune the duplexers, and program the repeater controllers, etc.
The W4KGC repeater’s Cellwave PD220-3A antenna has been upgraded to a COMSCOPSE DB-224E.