History of the USVI Linked Repeater System
The three main islands of the US Virgin Islands are St. Croix, St. John, and St. Thomas. The greatest distance between them is about 35 miles of open water. There are repeaters on each of the main islands. A long time vision of old-timer Mal, NP2L was to have the repeaters all islands linked together. While a logical means of linking the repeaters might be the Internet, we have these little things called hurricanes here. Another issue is that the internet isn’t always there.
Following the aftermath of 2017 hurricanes Irma and Maria, many portions of the islands were without phone, internet, and / or power for MONTHS. The sole functional post-storm repeater on St. Croix provided limited coverage but was none-the-less a critical link in post storm communications. We needed a more resilient and hardened solution. Given the post storm infrastructure failures, and because we’re hams, we felt a hardened UHF linked repeater system would be the best solution.
Through a very generous philanthropic grant, funding was obtained to purchase the components of the new system.