It all started in 1980. Four friends got together and wanted to put a repeater on the 220Mhz band. At that time, there was only TWO repeaters on 220Mhz in the Kansas City area. 223.94 (WAØCBW) and 224.94 (WBØKIG now WØQQ). Both of these are still on the air.

The original owners were: Ken-WBØKIA, Les-WBØKFK, Bob-KAØGBW and Ken-WBØVRV(SK). Since commercial equipment could not be converted at the time, the guys decided to buy a complete Spectrum system. Soon, the SCR-1000 went on the air at various homes of the owners. Then in 1982 the dream started to materialize. A commercial site was acquired in Downtown KCK, and the hardware was moved and turned on. At the annual pilgrimage to Dayton in 1985 for the Hamvention, meetings were held with ACC Controls and a loaded RC850 was purchased. Back then this was the cadillac of repeater controllers with hundereds still in use today. Also purchased was a Doug Hall 4 channel receiver voter for future expansion to multi-site.

Over the next year a scramble was on to start finding remote receiver sites. After 4 were found, a central site for the link receivers, ACC controller and high powered 220 transmitter was needed. This process took aproximately 3 yrs (1985-1988). Once those were latched onto, then the building began. Over the years addtional goodies have been added to the system. These include:
ACC Shackmaster to interface a Kenwood HF radio- Yes you could walk around town with a 220HT and talk out over 20Mtrs
DVR to leave "voicemail" for someone- this is the way it was done before email and cell phones.
100W+ amplifier. It would not do any good if you could TALK to the system from the far reaches of the metro area if you could not HEAR the system.
A remote base interface for linking into ANY sytem on 2 Mtrs, 220Mhz, or 440Mhz.
Also, wayyyy back then, before cell phones there was a thing called an Autopatch, and it allowed you to make phone calls from a radio. These were REAL popular back in the day.

So fast forward to 2009. With sister sytems on 147.165, and 927.5875, time is coming to be able to link all of them together. So, since the ACC has seen better days, and is getting a little long in the tooth age-wise, An ARCOM RC210 controller is being put in replacing the ACC. But, unfortunately the ARCOM is showing some issues and will soon be replaced with an SCOM 7330 (or 7440 if it is on the market by them), to give full linking between 2, 220, and 900 with a remote base thrown in to link for storm spotting and emergencies.

Also over the years a sister 220 Mhz machine was added to the stable. It is on 224.20 Mhz, and it is a single site system.

We at the BYRG are extemely happy to be affiliated with this fine array of RF hardware, and look forward to what the future holds. Where does it go from here? Only one way, as always- UP!!!