Repeaters | N4BC

Repeater work

I made a couple of trips to the repeater site this weekend. The club’s repeater committee has been working on the VHF repeater, trying to get the new controller interfaced with the ancient Motorola repeater. We got the repeater and controller to the site and in setting it up found that the CTCSS decoder was not working. Further investigation revealed a wire to the PL board had come loose during the truck ride. An attempt at attaching the wire to its proper place produced a BIG spark and a blown 500ma fuse. (NOTE: turn off power before connecting wires!) The fuse was replaced, but still no PL action. Had a good input to the board, but no output. Looks like the board didn’t survive the ZAP!

Luckily, we had a spare. The next day we went back to the site and replaced the board, and that fixed the problem! The W4MT VHF repeater is back in full operation, and the backup repeater was switched off, just waiting for the next failure :-).

73 de Dick N4BC

Catchup

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Just a little over a year since I was on the air and more than six months since I posted here. There’ve just been so many other things demanding my time … life gets in the way.

Anyhow, I just received a QRP Labs QMX midrange (60-40-30-20-17-15 meter) transceiver kit in the mail, and am looking forward to building and operating portable with it. It’s a high performance, six-band CW and digital modes transceiver with CAT control and a built-in sound card. There is also a plan to add SSB capability in the near future by a firmware update. The hardware will support it.

I went down to our repeater site with several hams from the city EOC team to temporarily install a GMRS repeater for testing. The city is looking to reorganize (revitalize?) the CERT teams and use GMRS for communications. The CERT program has slowly drifted into disuse, but the new Emergency Operations Manager wants to start the program up again.

Next month, the annual Smart Smiles 5K, sponsored by the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Virginia Peninsula, takes place at the Mariners Museum. The course is different this year due to road and bridge construction issues. Several radio clubs get together and provide communications for this event every year. It’s a fun event, with participants of all ages and abilities participating.

73 de Dick N4BC

What’s New?

I haven’t posted for a while, but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been doing anything.

I’ve been chasing Parks on the Air (as usual), and having some success with the improved solar conditions, but my main emphasis since the 1st of the month has been the 13 Colonies Special Event. So far, I have ten of the original 13 in my log, and still trying to break the pileups on the last three. There are three bonus stations, and I have WM3PEN in the books, but not the overseas two. I’ve worked them where I found them … 80M, 40M, and 20M … and on several modes … CW, FT4, and FT8. Surprisingly, none on SSB so far. The phone pileups are chaotic.

Six meters has been having some nice openings, too. All up and down the East coast from here … the farthest contacts have been into Canada, Cuba, and Bermuda. The majority of those contacts have been on FT8.

Our VHF repeater (W4MT) has been up and running for several weeks now, after having some problems passing audio (knock on wood 🙂 ). We never identified the cause, but the problems were coincident with HVAC problems … the drain on the wall unit was plugged and the condensation was running out onto the floor inside instead of outside. Everything was still cool. We unclogged the drain line, and I wonder if the high humidity had something to do with the issues we were having?

It looks like Tropical Storm Elsa will be just a rain event here in coastal Virginia. We’ve still got our eye on its progress, but hopefully it’ll just be wet! We’ll surely see some coastal flooding, but we get that with any big rain event.

73 de Dick N4BC

Miscelleney …

The repeater antenna has been repositioned and braced against excessive sway, and all repeater operations are back to normal. If you recall, high winds had blown the antenna into the tower and one of the elements had hung on the tower structure.

Six meters FT4 and FT8 were busy this afternoon. Seems like Cycle 25 is heating up

I picked up a new “Pocket Portable” iambic key from CWMORSE this week. It’s 3D printed and is really nice quality. I’m looking forward to getting out into the field with it soon.

Field day is coming up soon. Our club, in concert with several others, is mounting a combined operation, as we have in past years. Hopefully, it’ll be a great event.

73 de Dick N4BC

Update …

A further update on the repeater antenna … The wind whipped it into the tower, a U-bolt got latched under one of the diagonal tower braces, and it’s stuck there. We’ve switched over to the backup antenna (just a few feet below this one), and will tend to the stuck antenna during the next tower inspection, unless Mother Nature pops it loose before then.

Our plans are to add a pvc standoff to hold the mast away from the tower. The backup antenna (a dual band fiberglass stick) already has one. Hey, hindsight is 20/20, right?

73 de Dick N4BC