== THE BRISTOL 70cms Repeater ==
GB3BS - 430.850 (RU68) - CTCSS TONE J (118.8Hz)
The repeater GB3BS, has been operational from it's site in Kingswood which is located on the North East side of Bristol since 1976.
The coverage of the repeater ranges from West along the M4 motorway to the outskirts of Cardiff, to around Junction 18 of the M4
going East. The outskirts of Gloucester to the North, down to Weston-Super-Mare are also covered.
However, attention to providing good coverage for hand-portable & mobile users in the built-up areas including the
city centre of Bristol has always been paramount.
Gb3bs 20:14, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
GB3BS is one of the longest serving repeaters on UHF and was licenced in 1976 although its licence was applied for not long after the band was allocated by the then General Post Office who regulated the radio spectrum.
In May 2009 the repeater owners were issued with a request to leave the Cossham Hospital site, this was to allow £18.6m referbishment work to be undertaken. This work was to extend the life of Cossham Hospital, a landmark in the healthcare of Bristol. The work was the result of campaining by local government as well as local people to keep the Hospital open. The repeater group, although disappointed that the health authority would not concider proposals which would allow the long relationship between the repeater and the hospital to continue (it is romoured that this is purely a financial thing, something that cannot be proven).
It was expected that once the repeater left site the group would simply stop operating and allow GB3BS to go the way of many repeaters within the UK. However it is understood the owners pressed on to find a new home for the repeater, a number of both commerical and privately owned sites were investigated including BT, Water, Gas, council and a number of local radio site owneres were proposed.
Thankfully with help from B&NES Raynet group the repeater found a new home at Lansdown on the East side of Bristol. The repeater was move to the new site just before Christmas 2009 and from the new site the coverage now includes the whole of the M4 from Cardiff thorugh to J15 at Swindon, a range that allows safe continue repeater coverage without the need for a mobile station to re-tune. Its coverage to the South covers from the A303 right through to the outskirts of Gloucester to the North.
The repeater continues to be operated by a small yet dedicated set of people and purely for non commercial purposes, it is understood in times of national emgergancy arrangements have been made for the repeater to be used by Raynet to extened their effective coverrage range.
We with the repeater mainy more years of service and its nice to see such a historic, well known repeater to keep doing its job and bringing many hours of enjoyment to not only local amateur station, but to continue serving educational establishments.
January 20th 2014:
The Bristol 70cms Repeater Group were issued an N.O.V from Ofcom to place on air a DMR Repeater. This repeater is GB7BS and will be co-located with GB3BS at the Lansdown site. DMR Coverage will be similar to GB3BS and it is hope to have the repeater operational late June 2014. It’s frequencies will be Output 439.1625MHz Input 430.1625MHz. Colour Code 3 Timeslot 1 will carry local area traffic, Timeslot 2 will be used to link to the Southwest DMR Cluster.
GB7BS is now operational. Timeslot 1 Talkgroup 9 for local traffic, Timeslot 2 Talkgroup 950 for the Southwest cluster. (GB7AA, GB7BS, GB7JB, GB7SD and GB7DR are current members of the cluster)
In April 2015 GB3BS and GB7BS were joined by MB7VV. MB7VV is a 2m APRS Digipeter and RX only iGate. It to lives at the Bristol 70cms Repeater Group site at Lansdown N.E. Bristol and operates on 144.800MHz. This APRS digipeter WAS NOT FUNDED by the repeater group.