The Seminole Texas Amateur Radio Club (STARC) aims to provide a number of online resources to it’s members. Users should take all precautions when visiting a website, even if it is known to the user as being safe. A compromised server can lead to the remote installation of malware and/or the release of private information. Even the best of websites can be compromised, in the event this happens personal information may be exposed. For this purpose it is highly recommended that users assign a unique password to each website they visit and maintain anti-malware software on their computers.
Frequency Coordinators are critical to ensuring that repeaters do not interfere with each other and that there are frequency pairs available for clubs and operators to setup repeaters for public and private use. To that end the Seminole Texas Amateur Radio Club is interested in two entities. They are the Frequency Coordinators for Texas and New Mexico. An additional service they provide is repeater lookup for the repeaters they coordinate.
- Texas VHF-FM Society: The Texas VHF-FM Society is a club that goes back over half a century. If you want to setup a repeater in Texas then these folks are the ones to talk to.
- New Mexico Amateur Radio Frequency Coordination Committee: The New Mexico Amateur Radio Frequency Coordination Committee does the same thing as the Texas VHF-FM Society, but they do it for New Mexico rather than Texas.
The ability to lookup an operator is critical if one is intent on verifying they are legitimate and/or verifying a QSO. To that end two resources are often recommended.
- FCC ULS: The FCC ULS database is the literal authority on United States operators and their call signs. If it is in this database then it is official. Additionally other services can be searched here as like like GMRS, aviation, commercial, and marine.
- QRZ: QRZ is considered by many to be the most important logbook/lookup site on the web. While it does have the most complete database of operator callsigns worldwide, it is not an official source. For United States call signs it is recommended to verify the data with the FCC.
These websites allow operators to lookup repeaters. It is important to note that while the operators of these websites work hard to ensure that their data is accurate, the more data they manage the more likely that inconsistencies or errors may be found.
- Repeaterbook: Repeaterbook has an extensive list of Amateur and GMRS repeaters.
- RadioReference: RadioReference is considered by some to be the premier repeater listing service on the web. It has an extensive database of Amateur repeaters along with a database of Public Service and Commercial repeaters as well.
- RFinder: Rfinder has a paid repeater database service. You must register using the Android or IOS app to make use of the database.