Ham radio enthusiasts no longer have to manually tune the radio as new repeaters come into range. Glen's Ham Radio Repeater Locator consists of a Zilog microcomputer with the locations and frequencies of several thousand repeaters stored in its flash memory. The system displays the distance to the nearest eight repeaters and more. Worstell writes: "The display's top two lines show the distances in miles to the nearest eight repeaters. Pressing the station-select button (the red button on the left) selects the next repeater. The third line shows the repeater frequency and the tone information for the selected repeater. The forth line gives the UTC, the call sign of the selected repeater, and an update counter that changes with each new GPS position ... I built the system using a single-sided breadboard with holes on 0.1" centers. The solder side of the board has horizontal traces connecting all the holes in a row. I find that using this breadboard yields a much neater layout than using one that just has holes with no traces. Use a Dremel tool to cut the traces when necessary. A magnifying glass or microscope makes the procedure easy. You can purchase the blank board from Radio Shack or other suppliers. Surface-mount resistors, capacitors, and transistors can be mounted on the circuit side of the board. Through-hole components can be mounted on the other side. Components and jumpers are aligned vertically."
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