The Cholla Amateur Remote Base Association is a group of amateur radio operators based in southeastern Arizona who enjoy connecting mountaintop remote controlled uhf radios together via advanced radio linking. As part of the Cactus Intertie System, we bring connectivity to our service area which is centered on the city of Tucson, AZ. CARBA is a sponsored membership orgainzation of licensed radio amateurs that has been in existence since the mid 1970's. To learn more about our group and its structure, you can read the CARBA FAQ.

We have taken our name from the indigenous Cholla cactus, commonly known as the jumping cactus, because of its similarity to our radio links jumping from site to site.

Our group is at the forefront of using the amateur radio Microwave Bands for our links. We have developed practical ways of linking our different sites using an infrastructure built on microwave radios. You can learn more by reading The CARBA MICROWAVE STORY.

Mt. Lemmon	This is our primary site which overlooks Tucson from a 9000 foot vantage point in the Santa Catalina Mountains.
Mt. Bigelow	CARBA's primary microwave hub is located a few miles east of Mt. Lemmon. The site provides us a place to mount mutiple microwave dishes making a hub possible.
Downtown	Our local site provides close in coverage in the metro Tucson area as well as fill-in coverage on the north part of the city which is shadowed from Mt. Lemmon.
Mule Mt.	This site provides great coverage in the southeast corner of the state. Mule Mt. overlooks the town of Bisbee and has a great view of Sierra Vista and Douglas.
Elephant Head	Located half way between Tucson and Nogales in the Santa Rita mountains, Elephant Head Peak provides solid coverage along Interstate 19 south of Tucson.
Heliograph Pk.	At a 10,000 foot elevation, Heliograph Peak is our highest site. It is located along the south end of the Piñleno Mountains overlooking the town of Safford. We share the responisbility for the site with the Jacks Peak Cactus Intertie affiliate.
Dragoon	Near the town of Dragoon, Arizona, this site overlooks Texas Canyon and east and west along I-10 between the towns of Benson and Willcox.
Dark Canyon	We are also partners with the Jacks Peak A.R.A. in this site in southeastern New Mexico. Dark Canyon is on the last high mountain in the southwestern U.S. and looks over the plains to the east. It is also our radio gateway to Texas.

SARBA	The Saguaro Amateur Remote Base Assn, is our neighbor to the north. We link to their site on Pinal Peak via a microwave link from our site on Mt. Bigelow. Pinal Peak often will receive much snow in the winter. Here are some photos of a storm in 1997.
JPARA	We share our site on Heliograph Peak with them. The Jack's Peak group has sites throughout New Mexico in locations such as Sandia Peak, Benson Ridge, Dark Canyon, Caballo Mountain and, in Arizona, on Guthrie Peak.
NERA	The Cactus affiliate in the Washington, D.C. area is NERA. N7CK has made 2 trips east and in his travels took some photos of the NERA installations. We link to NERA and other repeaters via the Internet Repeater Linking Project.

Click here to see some of our sites' Videos and Other Files.

We now have some photos of the construction on the Mt. Bigelow site. These photos were made during the preparations of the site for the new Digital Television transmitters, now on the air. You can see how we relocated our dishes to make room for the construction.
How does digital TV work? Read all about it here.

CARBA has participated in collecting weather data via APRS from the radio site on Mt. Lemmon.

The ragtime background music was "performed" by N7LDI lovingly entering each note one at a time into his computer. There are 25 different tunes from a collection of 80 which are selected at random each time the page is loaded.

If, for some strange reason, you don't like the music. Click Here for a silent page.