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The Chesapeake Network grew out of the simple idea to link two amateur repeaters together, traversing the Chesapeake Bay. Today, it is a much larger enterprise, extending from the Atlantic Ocean west into Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and connecting with other networks to extend the coverage even farther.
In the late 1970s the 147.18 repeater in White Oak, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C., was one of the newest ham repeaters in the area and had a rambunctious bunch of guys participating in its upkeep and building a club around it. Many members of the Tri-County Repeater Association frequented the beach resorts of the Eastern Shore from Ocean City, Maryland up to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. It wasn't long before members agreed with amateurs at “the beach” that a repeater was needed down there.
In June of 1980, an experimental repeater that we installed in Bethany Beach on the same 147.18 pair proved to be a hit with members and tourists passing through the area. It even had a voice identifier long before those crappy synthesized voices came to be the standard.
In the Summer and Autumn months a link system was provided by Mother Nature on occasion, as troposhperic ducting and temperature inversion layer reflections allowed the distant repeater to be heard while replying on the local repeater. We could sit on the balcony at a beach house talking through the Ocean City repeater and be heard back in D.C., while reciprocating with hams talking to us via the White Oak repeater on the same frequency.
While this was fun for a time, it was chaos for those in between the two repeaters as heterodynes would render communications on the frequency difficult or impossible. To make matters worse, another co-channel repeater in Pitman, New Jersey would often lock horns with the Bethany Beach repeater since they were essentially looking down each others' throats with the slightest atmospheric enhancement.
Finally, in the late 1980 we moved the “beach” repeater's location to north Ocean City, Maryland and its frequency to 147.015 whose closest co-channel neighbor was in Fredericksburg, Virginia and rarely proved to be a conflict. This made for clean operation without the myriad inteference problems that had plagued the original arrangement.
By now, our much-discussed plans to link the White Oak and Ocean City repeaters were starting to take shape as we gathered equipment for a UHF linking network.
As KA3LAO befriended other hams the network plans grew. With each additional site came another opportunity to extend the reach of the linking network. We had hams with repeaters near Salisbury, Prince Frederick, and Thurmont, Maryland to provide sites for the backbone of the growing network.
Over time the plans changed as interest waned among some participants and the construction of the system lagged behind. Now, with renewed interest locally and with other linking networks in neighboring areas the project is even more extensive than ever before.
The Chesapeake Network comprises the Central, Eastern Shore, and Allegheny Divisions. The link between Central and Eastern Shore Divisions is Echolink over the Internet. The Allegheny Division is linked to Central via UHF radio.
Each division can be separated by commands over the link radio system or via packet radio. This is useful for conducting local nets or isolating interfering segments of the network.
The Central Division encompasses central and western Maryland with nodes in eastern West Virginia and nearby southwestern Pennsylvania. This is the core element of the Chesapeake Network as it hosts the large Thurmont hub and the home White Oak repeater.
The maps fill the screen and then some on most display resolutions. The overlay map is not designed for printing since the DeLorme Street Atlas base map cannot be resized without rendering it unintelligble.
The Eastern Shore Division includes the Ocean City repeater as well as Seaford, Delaware.
The Allegheny Division lies in the mountains of western Pennsylvania and West Virginia and is currently under development.
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