Cochanneling activities

Much activity in being a radioamateur is experimental. Every ham is inventing the wheel again and again, in order to gain experience and knowledge to share. I think one of the best examples momentarily in experimenting is the cochanneling / diversity project for North- and East Netherlands. This project is a cooperation of more than 40 amateurs and tries to realise an analog relay system with a huge covering. Started as an idea in 2006, realisation began last januari. Now, some 7 months later, a multi relay covering most of northeast Netherlands is live. And although in an experimental fase, first reactions are very positive! 

Cochanneling is all about transferring the best received signal from a wide range of receivers/signals through the internet  to all the transmitters. The trick is that all these repeaters use one frequency! Image this: move through the covering area, you signal is received by different receivers and the best is transmitted in the rest of the area!  Initialy started with two repeaters, nowadays twelve are operational.

I quess a project like this will learn us a lot and thats why I think you should pay these guys a visit on their website. If you want, download the software to monitor the activity. The upcoming holiday allows me to spend a lot of time in an area located in the reach of two of those repeaters, you can imagine I will listen in on that frequency (in / out 431.623 / 430.025 shift 1,6 MHz)!