Chuckwalla


About 10 miles west of Desert Center and from an altitude of about 3,400 ft above mean sea level, this site covers Interstate 10 through the middle part of the Coachella Valley. This site is accessible all year around and while getting to the bottom of this mountain is very easy, the last 2 miles of road to the site is 4 wheel drive only. The road is very steep as well as the majority of the road being broken granite rock, which is not very kind to tires.

The Remote was installed in March of 1996. The original site had only 3 radio cabinets in the 12 foot by 14 foot building and 4 antennas on the tower, which is the bottom 50 feet of an Edison Hi-Tension wire tower. The Cactus installation doubled the number of antennas on the tower. From that day forward there have been many improvements to the site. There are now 5 amateur groups in this amateur only site. There are a total 12 cabinets and open frame racks that contain all the equipment including the receiver combiners for the 3 community receive antennas and the battery backup system for some of the equipment. To get better coverage, 85 feet of Rhone 25 was installed up through the center of the Edison tower and community receive antennas for 440/420, 220 Megahertz and 2 Meters were installed at the top. Two crossarms were built and installed at the top of the Edison tower for mounting antennas. The antennas that are shown on the telephone pole have been moved to the tower, and on one of the future work trips to the site we will remove the telephone pole. The pictures below show a before (on the left at the initial Cactus installation) and after (on the right as of Feburary '98) tower configuration.

 

The Chuckwalla radio is housed in two cabinets and consists of a Palomar Telecom Controller, a Motorola "MSY" Remote, with the transmitter driving a Cactus Standard 28 volt 80 watt output power amplifier. The link radios consist of Motorola Mitreks as transmitters and two (2) GE MASTR Pro wideband receivers and one (1) Motorola Mitrek narrowband receiver.

 

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Revised: May 7, 2011 by WA6PYJ
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