The Voice Repeater System has a somewhat similar "fall together" beginning. Randy Nelson, WB0VHB's, 2 meter Winfield repeater was a split site machine using the 444.950 Mt. Pleasant repeater as it's link from site to site. One winter Michael Muldoon, KE0BX, was talking to the locals on the Mt. Pleasant 147.39 repeater when he mentioned his desire to link his 145.41 repeater to somewhere, anywhere! Michael had received his ham license while living in Texas and was right in the middle of the West Texas Connection, a linked repeater system covering several hundred miles of that end of the state. The trustees of the 444.95 repeater said "Great idea, why don't you link to us?" Hmmmm...... 

Little did Michael know that Dave Metz, WA0AUQ, was working on the very same thing! As it happened, Dave and Michael turned on their UHF remote bases on the very same day, Memorial weekend. And so the system was born. 

With the formation of SEITS, the group became the steering committee for the future of the VRS. Sometime early on Jeff Lindberg, K9JL, and Ray Cabry, W9WXR(SK), attended a SEITS meeting and decided they wanted in on the fun with Ray's repeater in East Moline, Illinois. SEITS donated a UHF radio to them to use in linking 146.76 into the existing system. 

With the basic system in place, improvements were began. The distance from East Moline to the system hub in Mt. Pleasant made the link noisy. Dave and Jeff worked up a solution by installing a simplex link from Muscatine to East Moline. 

In the fall of 1993, the Mt. Pleasant UHF repeater that was the center of the system lost it's tower site. The relocation of the repeater made it unsuitable for continued use as the hub. Dave, WA0AUQ, and Randy, WB0VHB, devised a plan to remedy the situation and revive the now down system. 

Mary Beth Penne, N0IJP, worked with the Iowa Repeater Coordinator, Denny Crabb, WB0GGI, to move Dave's existing 444.350 allocation to Winfield. Dave and Randy then rebuilt the Winfield 2 meter repeater and tied it directly to the UHF repeater. 

We were back!! And with this new foundation the system has grown to include most of eastern Iowa and parts of western Illinois and northeast Missouri. 

Comments or submissions for publication can be sent to muldoon@seits.org