[Waverley ARS] Repeater News

[Raffy]

Dear Members,
 
I am pleased to report that last Tuesday (31st July 07) Laurie VK2GPL and
myself (attending) put the 70cm repeater back into service, which also means
the IRLP is back up and running.
 
Laurie spent a lot of time in maintenance and alignment, installing the
CTCSS and making sure the tone did not over deviate to interfere with IRLP. 
 
He disassembled the three cavity filters, touched up the soldering where
necessary, re-assembled and calibrated them.
 
The end result is that the repeater is working better than before.
 
Prior to the current maintenance, the 70cm repeater was outputting 2.6 watts
at the feed line feed point (just past the cavity filters). The measurement
now is 6.8 watts at the same point.
 
Another positive factor is the fact that the feed line is now very low loss
heliax (a couple of very high quality cable runs abandoned by a now defunct
sea phone service).
 
WHAT YOU SHOULD DO:
 
Now that the 70cm repeater has CTCSS of 123 Hz on both input & output, it
would be beneficial for members to change the settings of their memorised
channel for this repeater from "Tone" to "Tone Squelch".
On Yaesu Radios it is usually indicated either by  "TSQL" or Tone SQL". This
is the same setting as for the 2 metre repeater.
This will greatly assist in rejecting random interference on the output of
the 70cm when no QSO is taking place.
 
 
Regarding the 2 metre antenna:-
 
The original reason for doing work at the repeater site was that a
commercial service is now renting the site (for a reputed six figure annual
fee) and certain Occupational Health & Safety requirements dictated that our
antennas had to be moved. Upon inspection, the 2 metre antenna was found to
have a strange "kink" in it. Having been up for many years, Laurie felt that
it was time to replace it. Only a properly qualified and insured rigger was
to be allowed to do so.
 
That work is now complete, and both antennas now share the same pole and
high quality Heliax feed lines. 
You can see our antennas from the side street (near the Hardware shop). They
are near the edge of the roof at the same level on a "T" mast. 
 
The total cost was $913, which was less than the estimated maximum of $1200.
 
Even after spending a lot of time for us physically working on the
resolution of the problems, Laurie very generously donated $100 of the total
bill, leaving $813 as the final cost.
 
We should be deeply grateful to Laurie's great stewardship and hard work.
 
We also met the man in charge of the building, and he appeared quite
satisfied with the level of compliance to his requirements.
 
73
Raffy VK2RF
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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