Wildfire Scorches Vital Nevada Repeater — Repairs Racing to Beat Labour Day

Wildfire season has a habit of finding exactly the infrastructure a community can least afford to lose, and this time it found a repeater that a lot of Reno-area hams depend on.

KA7ZAU, a 2-metre repeater serving Reno, Nevada, became one of the casualties of a major wildfire that tore through the region last month. It's not just another machine on the band plan — this repeater carries the weekly Weather Net for SKYWARN and serves as a key link between amateur radio and the Red Cross.

Assessing the Damage

Hams were still working through the evaluation when they updated Newsline by email. Greg Krantz, NT7Q, a director of the Sierra Nevada Amateur Radio Society, said the building itself came through unscathed, but the radiant heat appears to have burned the feedline running to the antennas. At the time of the update, the team still needed to get in and inspect the equipment properly to gauge the full extent of the damage.

Krantz told Newsline the goal is to get the site back on the air by Labour Day weekend — assuming the local utility, Nevada Energy, restores power to the building in time.

A 16-Year Fixture Knocked Off the Air

The repeater's owner, Arlan Duwayne Robinson, KA7ZAU, said the Hawk Fire took out a number of repeaters when it broke out, hitting both amateur and commercial communications across the region — VHF and UHF analogue, P25 digital, the Fusion system, and 900 MHz systems all affected. The 2-metre and 220-MHz repeater serving Reno, Sparks, and the surrounding area has been on air for 16 years, supporting ARES, SKYWARN, and countless local events over that time. Arlan also serves as the Washoe County emergency coordinator for ARES.

"It will take time to replace damaged equipment and install new feedlines," adding that the repair work is aimed at getting coverage and reliability back to where they were as quickly as possible.