The Cactus Net East (CNE) was formed by a group of Amateurs that were interested in experimenting with Ultra High Frequency (UHF) FM repeater operations and Radio Frequency (RF) based linking at 420Mhz.

In addition, CNE became an ARRL Affiliated Club and increased in membership with others interested in UHF repeater linking experimentation.

Many of the members of CNE were also employed by the U.S. Army Communications and Electronics Command (CECOM) at Fort Monmouth and traveled on temporary duty about the U.S. and became interested in UHF and linking and observed first hand the operation of the Cactus Net on the west coast.

In addition, most of the technical committee members of the CNE were also technical committee members of the Monmouth County Radio Association that sponsors the 147.045 repeater since 1977. Thus the idea of co-hosting of the 443 repeater at the same location as 147.045 was undertaken.

The idea was to create the 443 repeater system and add links between it and Philadelphia to the west and Watchung to the north, thus begining the Cactus Net East network of systems. However, these off site systems never developed and 443 remained a local repeater system.

The 443 repeater began its operation in late 1981 or early 1982 as a coordinated repeater by Tri-State Amateur Repeater Council (TSARC). Operation began utilziing a converted, surplus, tube based, RCA repeater. Later this machine was replaced by a new solid state Kendecom repeater. The duplexer was Wacom and the antenna was a Celwave Super Stationmaster Model 455 Antenna

The original system was operated without the use of PL tone for access, however, later an anti-PL circuit was integrated when a system on the opposite 448/443 split came on-line in NY using PL on receive and transmit. This was at a time when PL in off the shelf radios was a single PL tone item or not available at all from the manfacturer.

In 1992 the Cactus Net East merged with the Ocean-Monmouth Amateur Radio Club (OMARC) and ceased to exist as a separate organization. All of the CNE members were given membership in OMARC for one year or had their membership in OMARC extended by one year if they were already OMARC members.