A south looking view from the top. You can see the Boston skyline in the distance.
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MMRA's North Reading site is atop a water tower. The two repeaters' antennas - a DB224 for
two meters and an FG4405 for 440 are at the top of the water tower, as well as a corner
reflector for linking.
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The North Reading repeater is built in a Digital Equipment
Corporation computer rack. At the bottom of the rack
is an Astron SRM50M power supply - which powers the RF and
power amp units of the VHF repeater. Above the Astron
is the Mastr II RF unit which is the VHF repeater. Next is
the Motorola Radius link radio.
Above this is the Yaesu System Fusion DR2X UHF repeater. On the
top of this unit is the Freedom Pop modem and Raspberry Pi
used for online access. The SCOM 7330 controller is at the
top of the front. To the rear of the cabinet, you can see one of the cavities
of the MMRA's UHF repeater.
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Historical Photos |
 | The photo to the left is of the antennas at the Burlington site.
This MMRA repeater was previously located in Burlington at the Lahey Hospital. It moved to our current site
in North Reading on April 30, 2016. Burlington is still home to MMRA's 224.88 repeater.
There were five antennas. The leftmost mast holds the UHF link antenna (corner reflector) and the UHF
repeater antenna (fiberglass stick). The center two antennas belong to our host's EOC (two tribanders: one is 2m/220/440 tribander, the other is
6m/2m/440). The rightmost antenna is the 2m repeater's DB224. While the leftmost and rightmost antennas have been relocated to the current site, the center antennas remain in Burlington.
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 | The photo to the left is of the antennas at the former
Stoneham site.
This MMRA repeater was originally located in Stoneham at the New England Memorial Hospital (also known as
the Stoneham hospital), in the 1970's. It remained there through multiple ownership changes and
even for many years after the hospital went out of business. In Spring 2008, MMRA was notified
that the hospital was to be torn down. Power is to be cut at the building in 2009. Thus began
the effort to find a new site.
On October 18, 2008 a crew of fifteen removed all the MMRA equipment, as well as some other ham
equipment, from the Stoneham facility and reinstalled it at our new Burlington location. Downtime
for the 2m repeater was less than six hours. |