The effective mobile coverage of the 70cm repeater at Wally’s is hampered by immediately surrounding terrain to the north more-so than to the south. For example, the repeater is patchy in Cowra itself but once a mobile clears Cowra heading to Grenfell, the repeater is noise free until the gateway to Conimbla. There are some notable veins of coverage, like Frogmore road all the way to Boorowa.

Where it becomes poor is when heading north from Purcell Drive onwards along the Mid Western Hwy, it’s game over. And driving further out along Binni Creek Road just north of the George Russell Drive intersection, it’s also lights out. The Garland Road which is a thickly tree lined road hugging Roseberg Forest to Lyndhurst has constant coverage but only just. But the coverage runs out of puff from VK2RBT much quicker to the north than from the west around to the south.

What is very interesting is that if given the chance to clear terrain early, UHF signals can carry beyond initial terrain surprisingly far. But what RBT shows is if the terrain continues without abatement as it does to the north, then there’s no hope unless a fixed station picks it up; for example Darren at Forest Reefs who only needs a small beam to work RBT without any noise both on analogue and digital.