Welcome to our site,
The Derwent Valley Repeater Association is a voluntary community group that formed in 1993 with the vision of placing a UHF CB repeater in the Derwent Valley for farmers, emergency services and the local community to use for communications in the Derwent Valley area free of charge.
In 1995 we had raised enough funds through tireless fund raising efforts to place a CB repeater on Mt Lloyd which is just outside of New Norfolk in the Derwent Valley West of Hobart.
This repeater on channel six covers a vast area from Hobart to Miena and Maydena. Anyone with a UHF CB in their vehicles or even homes can communicate free of charge.
We have a membership of around 50 members who donate $15 a year to the group, they devote their time for maintenance and fund raising activities.
The money donated goes towards power, maintenance and insurance costs, and this in-turn ensures we keep the radio running all year round.
Early in 2004 the DVR membership decided to expand their coverage and started to investigate locations and equipment required. After a failure at Mt Lloyd we decided to purchase a spare radio which was purchased from a communications company in Brisbane. They then assisted us in gaining a donation from the Brisbane Airport Corporation of a Tait UHF Repeater base. All that then needed to be done was buy a diplexer and find some sites.
The DVR approached the Tasmania Fire Service for access to two sites, the first was Brady's Sugarloaf near Tarraleah and the second was Herringback near Sandfly just North of Huonville. We than got the green light to go ahead and source the rest of the equipment.
A diplexer was sourced from the old Huon repeater group that used to be on Herringback and the spare KG107 was placed on Herringback in February 2005. Coverage from this site is as far as Southport in the south to parts of Hobart and everywhere in between. There are some black spots in the Channel area.
The Tait radio that was donated to DVR was placed in-service on Brady's Sugarloaf at the end of October 2005. The coverage from this site is excellent and covers from the West of Derwent Bridge the Highland lakes and Derwent Valley areas.
It's very important that we get support from the community by the way of donations to keep these radio's on air and maybe even build a network even larger.