Club HistoryThe First Repeater on Mt. Tom
by Mike - WA1DMX
John (Peter) Bertini K1ZJH and myself, Mike Pyrch WA1DMX were the creators of the first 34/94 repeater on Mt Tom. John used to work at the channel 40 TV station as an engineer. John and I went up the Mountain one cold icy winter night to test the site out with a receiver and a bunch of junk. I wish I had pictures of that! We wound up walking up the access road when John rolled the Dodge Ram into a ditch climbing the moun-tain for his evening shift. John didn't like that Dodge Ram because it was standard shift. John built the re-peater in the basement of his father's house where John lived. Long story shortened because I don't remem-ber allot of the other funny things that happened that night or when we delivered the repeater. I haven't talked to John lately.
I'm attaching the pictures I have of the original repeater. Get a kick out of the reel-to-reel logging recorder and note Mike WA1DMX sticking his fingers in the high voltage!
John K1ZJH took all the pictures with his Polaroid Camera, I scanned them to the computer. I wish I remembered the dates of all this history!!!
Photo by John- K1ZJH
Field Day, 19??....same era as repeater
Summit House on Mt. Tom housed amateur radio station before the house burned down in 1929
Thanks to Rick W6ANF of Colorado Springs, CO for sharing this bit of local amateur radio history.
To view Rick's entire collection of QSL cards and ham radio memorabilia, http://www.picasaweb.google.com/RadioW6ANF
If you have any historical information to share about Mt. Tom and MTARA history, please send to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
