HOTARC owns and operates several repeaters serving Waco and the surrounding Central Texas area. Repeaters listed under our club callsign W5ZDN are ours; you’ll also find a full listing of other repeaters in the region on our Area Repeaters page. Use the section links below to jump to a specific system, and please use the form at the bottom of this page to report any issue with a club repeater.
Our Club Repeaters
145.15 MHz — Primary 2 m (Bruceville/Eddy)
Providing excellent wide-area coverage and serving as the Baker’s Dozen ARES emergency-communication primary frequency, the 145.15 MHz repeater is located on the W5NCD tower near Bruceville/Eddy, south of Waco, radiating from a height of 400 feet AGL. It operates with a PL tone of 123 Hz and an input offset of –600 kHz.
Backup repeater: A backup 145.15 repeater located in Waco is activated when there is difficulty with the main repeater. You can distinguish the backup by the courtesy tone ending each transmission. This location has less signal range, so adjust your transmissions accordingly.
146.98 MHz — D-Star Gateway (near TSTC)
This repeater functions as the Waco-area input to the D-Star gateway (FM-digital transmissions only). The antenna is located near Texas State Technical College (TSTC) in Waco. It uses no offset and no PL tone, but you must register before you are allowed to use it. For full details and registration, see our D-Star page.
442.875 MHz — 70 cm (North Waco)
HOTARC’s 440-band repeater is located on a tower in north Waco. It operates on 442.875 MHz with an input offset of +5.000 MHz and a PL tone of 123 Hz.
More detail by system: 2 m & 70 cm FM • D-Star • Allstar • Fusion
Guidelines for Repeater Use
Courteous and legal use of a repeater is the responsibility of every amateur radio operator. HOTARC has established these guidelines to encourage good operating practices. Since the club is ultimately responsible for the use of these repeaters, operators who do not abide by them (whether or not they are club members) may be asked not to use the HOTARC repeaters. Thanks for your cooperation — let’s all be good neighbors!
- Emergency use always takes precedence over all other use.
- Organized activities such as nets or training drills have priority over routine conversations.
- Before keying your transmitter, listen for any activity on the repeater.
- Keep individual transmissions short. The timer on most repeaters is set to three minutes to follow FCC regulations. Please keep conversations to a reasonable length — about 20 minutes seems reasonable to us.
- It is bad etiquette to interrupt an ongoing conversation unless you have an emergency or something meaningful to contribute.
- If you can hear each other on the repeater input frequency, switch to a simplex frequency for casual conversation. Don’t use a wide-area repeater if one with more local coverage will do.
- Wait for the courtesy tone before replying, so that someone with an emergency or wishing to join the conversation has ample opportunity to “break in.”
- Identify your station with your call sign every ten minutes and at the end of a conversation. “Kerchunking” (a short, unidentified transmission to bring up the repeater) is illegal — always identify, even for a test.
- “CB”-style talk and off-color remarks have no place in amateur radio. Keep your activities responsible and courteous.
- Transmissions for business purposes are illegal. It’s okay to briefly talk about your business, but don’t conduct or promote your business on the air.
Setting Up Your Radio for Repeater Use
First, tune your receiver to the repeater output frequency. This is the “receive frequency” on which you will listen. If you only want to listen, that’s all you need to do. To transmit and join in, you’ll also need to set the offset and tone:
- 145.15 MHz listens 600 kHz below the output frequency. Configure your VHF transceiver for a –600 kHz (“negative”) offset. It also requires a 123 Hz subaudible tone (see below).
- 146.98 MHz D-Star gateway uses no offset and no PL tone, but you must register before using it.
- 442.875 MHz listens 5.000 MHz above the output frequency. Configure your UHF radio for a +5 MHz (“positive”) offset.
HOTARC’s 145.15 and 442.875 repeaters (and almost every repeater in our area) require a subaudible tone of 123 Hz. Signals that don’t include this tone will not be repeated — this keeps occasional distant “skip” signals from interfering with local use. Consult your radio’s manual for selecting and transmitting this tone (many radios show a “T” in the display when a subaudible tone is active).
Our repeater controllers have an activity timer that automatically shuts down the transmitter if the carrier is received continuously for 3 minutes. A brief pause between transmissions resets this timer. This protects the repeater if a radio gets stuck ON — but it will also time out if you talk for longer than 3 minutes without a break.
Problem with a club repeater? Please contact us — a working repeater is a shared resource, and we appreciate the report.