|
Click here to Visit us on Facebook!
Click here to email us!
Join us on our weekly Brewton Amateur Radio Union & Rural Radio Preparedness Association analog FM 2M net. Thursday nights
on the WB4ARU Repeater. The frequency is 146.970 negative offset no tone required.
WB4ARU is now the club call of the Brewton
Amateur Radio Union. BARU was the original call of Jimmy Godwin who was the real founder of the BARU. Jimmy was a police officer
on the Brewton, Alabama Police Department and was the main driving force behind forming a club and building a repeater.
Tragically, Jimmy died of an accident while he and his wife were erecting his tower in 1976. Though he was the main charcter
in securing permission for the tower sites, securing a telephone link between the transmitter and receiver site with the Escambia
County Comission paying the cost of the telephone line, and acquiring the equipment from which the repeater was constructed,
he was killed before the repeater became operational.
The original repeater callsign was WR4BAE, with Johnny Miller, K4VMT as trustee, followed by Scott Hillman, (WA4TYH) KT4CW,
then Leroy Weaver, WD4SBV. The original repeater was a 100 watt tube type transmitter. The recieve antenna was on a
tower 200 feet up. The transmit antenna was across the road on a tower 160 feet up. Both antennas were conected by a telephone
link.
The repeater went silent for about 10 years when the trustee Leroy Weaver moved overseas. The club members lost intrest and
the club disbanded.
Club President Larry Fussell N4CBS is
the driving force behind the revival of the club after years of neglect. If not for Larry, the local ham club would likely
have remained dormant, and there would be no amateur radio activity in the Brewton area. When Larry persuaded Leon
N4RTT to re-enter the hobby in 2003, They began to search for former club members. They found Scott
Hillman lived just a block away. (Larry and Leon live across the street from each other.) Leon sent Scott an e-mail,
and he responded with an interesting message about growing up in the house where Leon now lives. Larry then went by to visit
Scott at his home. The first informal meeting of the re-organized Brewton club was held in the ham shack of Leon,
N4RTT the following Saturday morning. Present were Larry N4CBS; Scott, then WA4TYH; Johnny
Miller K4VMT; and Leon, N4RTT.
Scott agreed to become trustee of the
new club and send all the paperwork to the FCC. The new club started out with just 4 people and has grown. Now
the repeater is back on, it's original frequency of 146.970, neg offset and no tone. The current repeater is a Yaesu system
fusion machine and it accepts both analog and C4FM input, however it repeats the received signal analog only. Please set you
digital transceivers accordingly.
The 146.970 negative offset frequency
has been used by the Brewton Club since the mid 1970's.
B.A.R.U. Officers:
President: Larry Fussell(N4CBS)
Vice President Jon Davidson(KI4RCA)
Webmasters:Larry Fussell(N4CBS), Jon Davidson(KI4RCA), and Zach Martin(KK4STI)
|
