Storm damage to the north country 147.135 OVARC repeater - can you help them rebuild?

 Back in June, a thunder storm knocked out the 147.135 Oswegatchie Valley Amateur Radio Club (OVARC) repeater. This is a fairly wide area coverage repeater covering the St. Lawrence Valley and northern Adirondacks. It has very nice coverage in areas with little or no cellphone service. I personally use this repeater often when in the Adirondacks or Thousand Islands area. The club is in the process of raising money to bring it back to life as soon as possible. Can you help them?

Some back ground; The OVARC Club Repeater has been around for over 40 years and is located on Vrooman Ridge in the town of Fine, N.Y. It's elevation is 1480'ASL and offers coverage generally in about a 60 to 70 mile radius of it's location. It is owned, operated, and maintained by the OVARC membership. The frequency is 147.135 MHz. + and a 151.4 pl tone and also has an Echolink node #823942 or WA2NAN-R. There is a morning net 7 days a week called the Rooster Roster at 7:30 am that is well attended by folks both south and north of the Canadian border.

A note from OVARC President; Kerry Bickford, WA2NAN:

We are looking for some donations for rebuilding our repeater site here in Fine, N.Y. in the Adirondacks.​ We had a severe thunderstorm and a lightning strike on a nearby power line here on June 16th that took out our VHF repeater, a DMR repeater, a APRS digipeater, two power supplies, and a solar controller, and cooling fans. Also our power grid entrance and 75' of underground power cable and conduit.​​ The repeater has been there since 1979 when we first set it up and never had lightning or surge damage in all those years.  This time it hit power lines real close to the site and blew the national grid meter right out of the entrance about 20 feet and cooked everything from there to the building and everything that was plugged in. Devastating to our little club and emergency communications here in the Adirondack Mountains.  Nearly $5000.00 damage, and not insured, don't know if we can recover from this but we are trying. This repeater site is very important to the area and covers into 4 counties for emergencies and world-wide with our DMR station.​ We're trying hard to get everything replaced and back running before the fall.  

If you could help us out with a donation, please send it to our OVARC secretary​ KB2HPR, David Jackson. PayPal donations can also be made to my PayPal account, as the club doesn't have a PayPal account.  I am the club president and can pass donations on to the secretary.  All who donate will receive conformation of their donation.  Send PayPal to kerry@northnet.org  at the PayPal web site. 

Club website: ovarc.us

Club Secretary: David Jackson Sr., KB2HPR, PO. Box 227, 8 Second St., Edwards, N.Y. 13635

Thanks....

Kerry-WA2NAN