SCHEART Infrastructure
3 Years Ahead of Schedule
SCHEART (South Carolina Healthcare Emergency Amateur Radio Team) communications infrastructure (i.e., hardware) consists of a series of strategically co-located VHF and UHF repeaters in each region of the state that form the SCHEART network. The repeaters are placed at broadcast and microwave towers owned and operated by South Carolina ETV. ETV’s microwave system allows each repeater to use a type of Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) to communicate with other regional repeaters to form a statewide linked repeater network. South Carolina ETV is under contract with the SC Department of Health and Environmental Control (SCDHEC) to build the SCHEART infrastructure, although ETV owns the infrastructure network, and will maintain it for the life of the system to benefit the SCHEART initiative. During emergencies, the individual repeaters will have the capability of being linked to provide a coordinated response, or they can be used as stand alones during major disasters for wide area transmissions.
Initially, completion of the infrastructure portion of the project was scheduled to take five years. However, due to the University of South Carolina Ham Coordinating Committee’s (UHCC) coordination with SC ETV and SCDHEC, the SCHEART infrastructure initiative is 3 years ahead of schedule. For additional information on the SCHEART infrastructure and installations, see below. New repeaters have improved handheld and mobile coverage up to sixty miles from their location. Now that more repeaters are online, ETV engineers have begun to test the system using the *0 reflector feature. This will give SCHEART the ability to demonstrate the full system capacity.
