The U.S. Forest Service installed a new radio repeater station this summer on Elbow Mountain, up the Stikine River, close to the Canadian border, part of a program to replace older mountaintop units with new stations. The Elbow Mountain unit, at about 4,200 feet, is important for radio coverage of the river area.
The U.S. Forest Service solar-powered radio unit at Fools Peak, at the entrance to Fools Inlet at the southern end of Wrangell Island, is less than 10 years old and is not on this year's replacement list.
They may be out of sight to the general public but they are never out of mind for the U.S. Forest Service.
The agency maintains 35 mountaintop repeater towers within the Tongass National Forest to provide radio coverage for their field crews and first responders.
A contractor is installing new repeater stations at five sites this summer in the Wrangell and Petersburg ranger districts, part of an ongoing effort to switch out older units with newer models.
Of particular importance to Wrangell, a new repeater has been installed atop Manzanita Peak on the southern end of Mitkof Island, said Brandon Thomas, the agency's supervisory electronics technician in Southeast. It replaces a temporary unit at the site, at about 2,600-foot elevation.
"The purpose of that is to cover the Stikine River," eliminating a dead spot for radio coverage on the river and at the Wrangell airport, he said. "Manzanita Peak is a huge win for Wrangell."
The Manzanita radio tower will be able to "talk" with the station at Elbow Mountain, near the Canadian border about 2 miles from the Stikine. The Elbow Mountain unit, which was close to 40 years old, was replaced this summer, Thomas said. It rests atop the mountain at about 4,200-foot elevation.
Manzanita and Elbow Mountain will be particularly helpful for search and rescue operations upriver, said Thomas. The Wrangell Police Department and Wrangell Volunteer Fire Department Search and Rescue are tied into the radio system, he added.
Some of the self-contained units around Southeast are 30 to 40 years old.
Crews visit each site annually to check on the equipment, which includes batteries, radio gear and an antenna. Most of the installations run on solar power, Thomas said, though units in northern Southeast which could get buried in snow, blocking out sun for most of the winter, run on propane airlifted to the tower site.
Newer lithium batteries can store enough electricity from solar panels to power the low-draw radio equipment for a month, he said.
The new units are 6-foot-square, 4,000-pound metal buildings, with a 20-foot antenna mast that is part of the building. To ensure they stay in place, each unit is weighted down with 44 inch-thick sheets of steel plate, adding an additional 4,500 pounds to the load, Thomas explained.
Rock anchors and steel cables are also part of the installation.
The units are manufactured by a Pennsylvania company, Pepro, that builds self-contained radio towers, cell towers and other telecommunications equipment. A unit of Ahtna, the Alaska Native regional corporation for Interior Southcentral Alaska, is the subcontractor for installation.
Each unit, plus installation, costs "north of $100,000," Thomas said.
Depending on the weather, a helicopter can haul a station to its site and workers can set up the unit in a day, he said.
The Forest Service selects mountaintops that provide line-of-sight linkage to other stations, he explained. The VHF FM signals can bounce from station to station to reach their final destination.
Even with 45 units scattered throughout Southeast, there are some dead spots without radio coverage, he said. "We shoot for about 80% coverage."
The units should last at least 30 years with regular maintenance, and perhaps brushing out the helicopter landing areas used for service calls.
After working in the Wrangell and Petersburg area this summer, the Forest Service plans to install new repeater stations next summer in the Sitka, Hoonah, Angoon, Juneau and Yakutat regions, said Thomas, who has been with the Forest Service since 2014.
Workers were waiting last week for better flying weather to deliver and install new units at Tyee Peak, at the southern end of Bradfield Canal on the mainland across from Wrangell, and at Farragut Peak north of Petersburg.
The Tyee station is an older fiberglass model, which will be replaced with a welded steel and aluminum building.
A new station was put in this summer on the west side of Etolin Island, facing Clarence Strait, with line of sight to Coffman Cove on Prince of Wales Island.
Wrangell and Petersburg area stations on Kuiu Mountain, Lindenberg Peak on Kupreanof Island and Fools Peak at the entrance to Fools Inlet at the southern end of Wrangell Island all are less than 10 years old and not in need of replacement.
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