A disassembled desktop repeater

Repeaters 4 Everyone!

Mission

The r4e Project aims to get repeaters on the air, that operate according to the principals of being open to licensed amateurs who:

affirm and promote participation by ALL operators, and who celebrate the diversity of race, color, sex, religion, range of abilities, affectional or sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, fursona, age, national origin, marital status, socioeconomic status, and physical characteristics represented in our community.

Goals

It is Vance’s goal to build, repair, or otherwise get repeaters on the air that can meet the r4e criteria detailed below.

r4e Project repeaters will:

  • Operate according to the mission statement outlined above
  • Utilize some type of linking - either RF or Internet - to be connected to the Pride Radio Network for at least 50% of said repeater’s uptime per week
  • Make connections during the other 50% of it’s time that do not clash with the r4e mission.

The backstory to all of this, started in a dumpster…

Several years ago (best guess - maybe sometime around 2017) Vance, N3VEM, was in a role where he traveled quite a bit for his day job. While visiting one of the offices near his home, one of the managers who knew he was a ‘radio guy’ said that they had a repeater that they didn’t use any longer, they weren’t sure if it even worked, and that they were planning on throwing it away, unless he had any ideas for a better use for it.

So while it never actually made it into the dumpster, it came very close, which is how Vance ended up operating the N3VEM Repeater in Witmer PA. (The story of finally getting it online in 2021 is outlined in a 2022 blog post on the subject)

Sometime soon after getting the repeater online, Vance learned about the Pride Radio Network, and after joining a few nets, decided to begin regularly linking his repeater to the network (4 out of 7 days of the week).

Sadly, in April of 2024 the ‘saved from the dumpster’ repeater went offline. Repair attempts are currently under way, and due to the response from a couple of very kind individuals to his recent blog post on the subject, he decided to launch this effort to start accepting gifts to help get the machine back on the air, and then continue the mission by getting additional machines up and running, that operate according to the same principals.