On Thursday morning, Aug. 21, technicians from Granite Electronics flipped a switch and activated the long-awaited KDØCI Two Meter Repeater at Ogilvie.

The repeater, operating at 147.240 megahertz (MHz) with a private line (PL) tone of 146.2 hertz (Hz) was built primarily through the efforts of Jerry Whitaker, WBØOFB.

Whitaker single handedly built, tested, and tweaked the repeater in the basement of his home east of Hinckley and then installed it at the Ogilvie site. He managed to get this done in spite of several personal setbacks, beginning in the spring and continuing into summer.

Among the worst of these was continuous flooding in his basement.

The activation of the Ogilvie repeater was the culmination of an effort which started in earnest over a year ago when Kenny Broshofske filed a formal application with the Minnesota Repeater Council for a two meter repeater pair for Kanabec County, to serve as the key intermediary repeater for what was termed the “Highway 23 Communications Corridor Project.”

The primary purpose of the project was to provide a repeater to link the hospitals and public health centers in Eastern Minnesota into St Cloud. The Collegeville repeater near St Cloud would serve as the hub for an emergency repeater network for all of Central Minnesota.

Another purpose for the Ogilvie repeater is to serve as a much-needed Skywarn outpost in Kanabec County - primarily for the Duluth office of the National Weather Service.

Amateur radio, often called ham radio, is both a hobby and a service in which participants, called "hams," use various types of radio communications equipment to communicate with other radio amateurs for public service, recreation and self-training.

Amateur radio operators enjoy personal (and often worldwide) wireless communications with each other and are able to support their communities with emergency and disaster communications if necessary, while increasing their personal knowledge of electronics and radio theory. An estimated six million people throughout the world are regularly involved with amateur radio.

The term "amateur" is not a reflection on the skills of the participants, which are often quite advanced; rather, "amateur" indicates that amateur radio communications cannot be made for commercial or moneymaking purposes.