Fox River Radio League
The Fox River Radio League, commonly referred to as the FRRL is an amateur radio club in Aurora, Illinois. As of September 2007, the club had approximately 190 members. The club was founded in 1924 and has regular monthly meetings at the Prisco Community Center in Aurora, Illinois on the 2nd Tuesday of each month at 7:30 PM. Weekly club nets are held at 7:30 PM on the other three Tuesdays evenings via the club's 2-meter repeater. Activities of the club include a large Field Day operation, several public service communications events, VEC-ARRL License testing, and FCC Amateur License Classes. Member of the club have conducted three ARISS contacts, where ham radio was used to communicate directly from school classrooms to the crewmembers of the International Space Station.
The FRRL repeaters, commonly called the Fox repeaters were previously known as AFAR - the Aurora FM Amateur Repeater which was Chicago's second operational 2-meter repeater. The club operates two FM repeaters located near 400 feet on the WBIG AM broadcasting tower on Eola Road, Aurora. The VHF FM repeater operates at 147.210Mhz with a standard +600 offset and 103.5 Hz PL tone.It is ACTIVE during the daytime hours, with excellent coverage of the Chicago area. The UHF FM repeater operates at 444.300Mhz with a standard +5 offset and 114.8 PL tone. The UHF repeater is also an active IRLP node at #4850.
The FRRL also operates a group of D-Star Repeaters from Batavia, Illinois. The systems are equipped with an active Internet Gateway function. Most of the D-Star activity can be found on the 442.10625 Mhz "W9CEQ _ _ B" system. This 440 repeater has portable user coverage in Aurora, Elgin and DeKalb Illinois with mobile coverage ranging from Morris, to I-294 at O'Hare to Marengo, Illinois. This repeater is the first digital system to operate on a "splinter" 6.25 KHz frequency using The New Illinois Repeater Association narrow-bandwidth migration bandplan. The lower "splinter" for this repeater's frequency is 442.09375 Mhz which is used by the North Shore Radio Club's "NS9RC _ _ B" D-Star repeater system. Other Frequencies for the D-Star systems are 1292.2 Mhz (-20.0 Mhz offset) for digital voice and 1242.2 Mhz for High Speed Digital Data. The D-Star system also operates on 145.270 Mhz -600 offset with shared operation courtesy of W9DWP/R in Elburn. The FRRL is an ARRL special service club.