FROM BRIAN’S E-MAIL OF AUGUST 3, 2013
Good Saturday everyone.
Today Frank/WB4CIW, Jeff/KDØUHL and myself/NØVSA made a trip up to the 146.895 repeater site to do some long needed inspections and repairs. Thank you Jeff and Frank for your help.
One of the big drivers for doing what we did was the “noise” we have all gotten tired of hearing for so long.
First we shut down the repeater and then took down the dual band repeater antenna. When we took the antenna down we noticed how loose it was on its base. The set screw that was meant to secure the antenna to the base was missing. At some point in the past the solution was to use electrical tape to secure the base to the mounting bracket. While this worked well for some time it was time to correct that. There was one small 2′ section of coax that was acting as a junction between the main feed line and the antenna base, which, when we disconnected it, water came running out.
We used the top section of another antenna that we had in stock from the club inventory, and installed it on the base section. Then eliminated the 2′ section of coax and all the connectors to make it work and hooked the feed line directly to the antenna base connection, eliminating about 3 different connection points. After securing the feed line to the antenna mast we put the antenna and antenna mast back into place and secured it to its support.
Upon powering up the repeater after all the work I was very pleased to NOT hear the “noise” we have all been hearing for far too long. I have heard a couple of little blips of noise but nothing compared to what we have heard before. Thank you Dolores for turning on the cross band for some testing and Jack/WØDSV. The cross band sounded wonderful. The best I have heard it in years.
While we were up there we decided to do the same thing to the 70 cm antenna. This is the antenna we will be using to link to the Kenosha site very soon. We found many of the same problems on the 70 cm beam antenna as we did on the dual band antenna, including the missing set screw at the antenna base. After correcting the deficiencies that we found on this visit, we put the 70 cm beam antenna back up and oriented it back towards Kenosha.
I think we had a very successful day today. I am pleased with what I am hearing so far on the repeater. I will be interested to hear what the net sounds like on Wednesday evening. I will be interested in any other signal reports that you all may have.
Thanks again to Jeff and Frank. I could not have done it without you guys.
73’s all Brian/NØVSA
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