TPARC Frequency List and Site Info

Here is a list of the frequencies used by the Telephone Pioneers Amateur Radio Club for our packet Drops. For more detail on each site, including pictures, click on each site's name below.

Victoria

Located in Victoria, the capital city of British Columbia, at the Central Switch office for the area. Due to the closeness to the US border, the antenna array was designed to aim in a northerly direction.

Victoria is linked via UHF trunk to Duncan.

Duncan

The city of Duncan lies at the bottom of Mt. Sicker (to the East). Once owned by Telus (formally BC Tel), Mt. Sicker was sold to the provincial government and will be used as a Doppler weather radar site.

This site is not accessible during poor winter conditions. Our Duncan site currently has the VHF simplex link to the TPARC Server as well as a UHF drop.

The UHF trunk looks south to Victoria and east across the water to the Headquarters building in Burnaby (Vancouver site).

Vancouver

Also know as the "Boot" due to its unusual shape. The Headquarters building was the first radio site for the TPARC, and is the Corporate Headquarters for TELUS Communications.

It was here that the joint Totem/TPARC club voice repeater was established. This was the first know joint venture in the Pacific Northwest. Totem club members allowed the TPARC repeater to use the frequency used by the Totem club.

This site was also the second packet site and is still used to test new equipment and concepts. Several TPARC members still work at the "Boot".

The Headquarters site trunk faces west to Duncan and east to Haney.

Haney

This site is located on the South slope of a small mountain overlooking the Fraser River where the Albion Ferry docks. One of the busiest sites due to its coverage from most parts of Vancouver to much of the Fraser Valley.

Here VE7CQD (a BBS) and DXWHO (DX packet cluster) have made their home, and a connection to TPARC.

This was the first packet site established.

The Haney trunk looks west to the Headquarters (Vancouver) site and east to Chilliwack.

Chilliwack

Situated on the North face of a mountain with the town of Chilliwack to the northwest and the Fraser Valley at it's feet, this site serves the mainly farming community with it's emergency communications.

The Chilliwack trunk faces Haney in the west and Hope in the northeast.

Hope

One of the most difficult sites to visit and maintain. This site sits at an elevation of 4954 feet or 1,510 meters above sea level.

Because it is at the end of the flat valley floor and is the first mountain range the westerly pacific weather will encounter, weather conditions can be among the worst in North America. Warm moist air rises quickly only to freeze on every structure it encounters at elevation. This makes for extremely hazardous conditions.

Every antenna component has to be designed to withstand the tremendous amounts of ice and snow that builds up.

This site cannot be visited for several months in the winter and is only accessible either by cable car or helicopter. All equipment must be small enough to be hand loaded onto the cable car.

Because of its unique nature, many photographs have been dedicated to this site. Our Hope site overlooks the Fraser River and the Trans Canada highway to the south and the town of Hope to the southeast.

The trunks look at Chilliwack to the southwest and at Merritt to the north.

Merritt

The city of Merritt lies at the east foot of Mt. Promontory.

Due to the great distance from Dog Mountain (Hope), special stacked UHF helical antenna arrays in radomes had to be used to make the shot viable.

This was not a designed path on the TELUS radio system, so this route does create some difficulties in maintaining a digital radio link. Very heavy snowfalls have been known to diminish the signal enough to drop the link.

Our Merritt site cannot be reached for several months during the winter without the aid of heavy tracked equipment (snowcat's) or, weather permitting, by helicopter.

Trunks from this site face Hope to the south and Kamloops to the northeast.

Kamloops

This site sits high above the city of Kamloops, in the valley to the northeast.

From here we link with the NetRom Network of Rob Dover, VE7EJE. His network links with other networks within the interior of BC.

Our Kamloops site has a bit of history and a great photo. During the great forest fire in the late 1990's, we nearly lost this site to an ever encroaching fire. Thanks to the radio site personnel and the fire fighters, this site survived.

For many years, this site was the end of the TPARC network. In 2007, an extension to Vernon (Silverstar) has been added. The trunks now face Merrit and Vernon from this site.

Vernon

This site was officially brought online in the network in September 2007.

Situated high above Vernon, it has excellent coverage of the North Okanagan, and can even be worked from Kelowna!

The site on Silverstar is located at the very top of the mountain, adjacent to the big chair lift. Since it is a ski hill, it obviously gets lots of snow in the winter. The equipment building in the pictures is actually just the outter shell, the real equipment trailers are inside.

For a graphical network diagram, click here.

For more information on connecting to our services click here.

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