GB3NT is the 70cm repeater covering much of Tyneside, the cities of Newcastle and Sunderland, and north into Nortumberland along the busy A1.
The repeater has been running for number of years and is accessed by a 1750hz tone plus 5 seconds of audio. The repeater is easy to wake up and an over is indicated by a morse ‘k’.
During periods when it is not being used by amateurs it will send out it’s callsign in morse every 15 minutes. Every hour a longer sequence will include its location.
GB3NT History
GB3NT the UHF repeater for the Newcastle upon Tyne area was first conceived back in 1977. After much work by the Repeater Group the unit was constructed and permission granted to install the unit at a site (Tyne Tees Television) on City Road, Newcastle in 1980. The repeater ran for some time at this location but access for servicing was quite difficult, and eventually decided to remove the unit and fitting from the site late in 1980.
At the next meeting of the repeater Group G4DAX very kindly offered a sit at the home of one of his relations which was located at Sheriff Hill, Gateshead, and the relevant paperwork was completed in time and dispatched to the RSGB. It took some two years to sort out all the details and it was decided in the interim period to repeater to take full advantage of the up to date technology.
We eventually gained approval in the spring of 1985 and after final field tests the repeater was installed on site at Sheriff hill on the 7th October 1985.
Unfortunately due to the long period of time between the offer of the site by G4DAX and the final permission being granted circumstances had changed and an alternative site was required.
The search was on and by the summer of 1985 with the help of G4DWM negotiations to re-site GB3NT on the Northern Gas Board telecommunications mast on the top of Sherriff Hill were well under way. Even before the site change had been approved by the RSGB the two aerials were installed on the mast. These were donated by Alyntronics of Newcastle and the installation was donated by Northampton Radio Structures.
GB3NT was moved to the Northern Gas site on the 28th June 1985 and re-commissioned at 19:15GMT. The 70cms repeater has now been running for 25 years at the same site.