History of Intertie, Incorporated
How we started?
Intertie, Inc. began as an effort to link cities in South Texas for hurricane emergencies. The linkage is by Amateur Radio transmitters and receivers that operate at UHF frequencies and above. Initially proposed at the Texas VHF FM Society meeting in 1977, by then West Gulf ARRL Division Director, N5RA, the club-supported system had an enthusiastic beginning, but gradually petered out for lack of funds and member interest. In 1993 the system was re-invented as the Armadillo Intertie with initial management by Amateur operators K5FOG, K7JR (then N5FL) and W5EX (then W5QMU). This is a privately funded network.
After re-connect of the Dallas-Moody-Austin-Blanco-San Antonio backbone, it became apparent that Texas was a bit big for this management model - and so a southern group was formed to manage communications south of Austin and westward more or less along US 90. Meanwhile, the Armadillo group headed west along I-20 and east to Houston.
Intertie was incorporated in July 1994. We resumed our plan to connect Alpine and El Paso to San Antonio west, to re-connect to Corpus Christi southeast, along US 181. The California interconnect via Dark Canyon, NM activated in September 5,1994, in QSO with N6DD in Diamond Bar, CA.
We operate 16 radio relay sites across south and west Texas, and a stand-alone open repeater in Corpus Christi. Three additional sites are in construction: at Pleasanton and Victoria, and a Kenedy upgrade. We do this with about 3 members/site - far too few - which means we are always looking for interested participants. Our call sign is WX5II.
Revised:
12/12/04 12:00 PM by N5VRP, Dennis Rogers, and KD5ZSY, Stanley Waghalter,
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