Site Manager:  Paul Boyce KJ7KY
Station Licensee: W7MOT
Freescale contact: Paul Bennett KD7KDO

The Elliot tower is located on Freescale Inc property at the corner of Price Road and Elliot Road in Tempe, AZ.  Originally the tower was used by Motorola's government electronics division as a microwave antenna test range facility.  The facility was later turned over to the stewardship of the Motorola Amateur Radio Club of Arizona.

Presently MARCA has two voice repeaters on UHF and 6 M
and an APRS digipeater installed and operational at this location.
Experiments are ongoing with commericial WI-FI equipment in hopes of using this equipment to link remote stations using cheap low-power microwave equipment.

The tower was once used as an HF station by club members but that no longer exists and access is limited.  The 2 ton lift attached to the building has been shutoff and needs an inspection prior to bringing it back into operation.
Dust has collected on most items stored in the tower; but the tower is commercially  shared with both a cellular and a paging company.

The UHF repeater is an old Micor repeater station.
A RLC link controller is located near the top and links the 6M and UHF repeater stations.

The transmitter is only putting out 7W.  This unit is planned to be replaced with a newer system.


The cavities for the 6m repeater are located next to the UHF repeater.


On the top of the UHF repeater, sits the 6m Micor mobile repeater.  Its size is a bit smaller than the Micor station repeater.  The station repeater also contains a power supply which converts power from the AC line to the 12V required by both the UHF station repeater and the 6M mobile repeater.


Next to the doorway on the left is the commercial paging transceiver,  a MARCA file cabinet and a smaller MICOR station housing a Maxar 50 and the APRS digipeater.


Next to the APRS station are some storage cabinets and old MICOR repeaters in various forms.  On the right is the door leading up to the antenna roof.


The rest of the room is filled with an old test bench,


cabinets and test leads.


On top, sits a large turn mount that the microwave antennas would be positioned. 
Also some modern microwave experiments are being housed in this old MICOR cabinet.


Antennas on the west side of the building.


The new microwave equipment has been removed from its shell.


One microwave dish is pointing west.  A GPS antenna is used by the cellular site both
for location and for accurate clock information.


On the east side of the tower.


Report by Paul Bennett, KD7KDO.

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