It’s baaaaaccccckkkkk!!!!
As I’m sure many of you already know, the 145.47 repeater is back on the air. I went to the site and repaired the repeater Sunday evening. What happened to the repeater? It had a power amplifier (PA) problem as I suspected. Fortunately, thru the generosity of another ham, I had a loaner spare PA assembly to swap out. I also did some tuning of the duplexer, which appeared to be out of tune on the transmit side causing a higher-than-normal reflected power reading back to the transmitter. That problem may have contributed to the PA failure, or it may have been its long hours of transmitting. 145.47 stays busy almost all hours of the day!
For those two reasons, I have decided to purchase an aftermarket commercial-grade continuous duty PA that will have VSWR protection. This will not be an inexpensive undertaking. The discounted price of the PA that I am looking at is $1000. However, I replaced the 444.300 PA with one of these same model amplifiers 10 years ago and have never had any problems with it since then. I want 145.47 to be as reliable as I possibly can, and I believe this is the next step.
Several of you have mailed in contributions to the “repeater fund” since .47 went off the air. For those who did so, I am very grateful. You will be receiving personalized thank-you letters soon. I will NEVER require contributions of any kind to be necessary in order to use my repeaters. But for those who have chosen to support them, I wish to express my sincere thanks. Your contributions will go toward this purchase. Operating repeaters is not cheap. I’m not quite halfway there, but I’m “saving my shekels” every chance I get!
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