The Logan County machine may be accessible from OKC at least for fixed stations. A group in Ada is thinking about linking to this system, but right now it’s just a thought. It is not believed that they have even contacted TARC concerning this.

There is the beginning of a link system concept where a few UHF frequencies under the control of a single organization would be used by a series of close spaced repeaters; perhaps reusing the frequencies at 75 miles instead of 90. Therefore by switching between hopefully two or three frequencies you would never be out of range of the system, and be able to communicate with a net control from anywhere in the state.

Having said all that we must keep in mind that there are other ways of doing this, 3900 kHz LSB is used a lot as the state’s emergency frequency on HF, along with another one on the 40 meter band when 75 meters doesn’t work. Hey, Morse code has gone away, so study a little and get your General class ticket.

There are also things like repeater linking with Echo link and IRLP. Also D-Star is beginning to make inroads into the state and with the digitized audio; it lends itself very well to dropping into wormholes on the internet and popping up who knows where.

None of these systems are perfect, so emergency management types should have the capabilities of using all of them.