O WB4GBI, Where art thou?
Well, its been a while since I have done a “blog” entry. Heck, its been a while since I have been on the radio much. So, let you think I have fallen off the face of the earth, let me offer you a glimpse of why you don’t hear from me much during the month of November.
In my “other” life, I am Chief Engineer for the Vol Radio Network. If you listen to Bob Kesling on the radio calling UT football or basketball, or Mickey Dearstone calling lady Vols home basketball games, you are hearing my handiwork. Incidentally, Dave, KE4YBZ, is almost always on the other end of our audio feed, producing the game back at our studios. As for me, I am at the stadiun or arena setting up the equipment and sending it back to Dave for distribution to our stations (WIVK and The Sports Animal) as welll as 80+ other radio statins throughout the Southeast. And this is my “second” job…I still take care of WIVK and its sister stations as their Chief Engineer.
If you are a UT fan, you already know this, but if not (GO VOLS!), then I’ll try to explain our November schedule. Football is still in full swing, and Men’s and Women’s basketball is starting up. Add to that a Monday Night coache’s show on location, a Thursday Night show (which Josh, KI4WWY produces), and a Sunday Evening show that is produced by another engineer but supervised by yours truly, you start to have an eveny almost every night of the week. Throw in a couple of press conferences about football coaches…and… well, you get the picture. A wise farmer once said , “You gotta make hay while the sun shines.” I have to make sure these broadcasts get on the air while we are in the season.
So, While you may not har from me as much, I’m around…I listen a whole lot more than I talk. You learn more that way J.
Now, what’s happening with the repeaters? Well, I have the new duplexer for 146.73 here at my house and ready to go. I was going to try to go to English Mountain this past Friday, but my daughter’s 4-runner (actually, its MY 4-runner…I’m making the payments!) needed tires and brake work, so I postphoned the repeater trip. I will try to make it up there sometime this coming week. Its about a two hour trip by the time I get the keys and head to the site. But I am sure that the time and effort is going to be worth it! If you like 146.73 now, imagine what it will be like when the receiver can “hear” what its supposed to!
I am also hoping to put a pre-selector and preamp on 444.300 real soon. This should help its receiver sensitivity.
The tone is presently OFF on 145.47. If the TV noise comes back, I will have to turn the tone decoder back on. Please remember to set your tone encoders to 118.8 Hz. And, as a side note, if the repeater tone happens to be off, it doesn’t hurt anything to leave your rig’s tone encoder on. It just makes you ready for the times when I have to turn the one decoder back on.
The rest of the repeaters seem to be doing well. I am hearing a few more autopatches on 147.075 that I used to. That’s great! Please just remember to ID ON and OFF of the autopatch. I hope to have some new 147.075 pictures on the web site soon. I had to retire the Quintron transmitter that you see on the main picture…it just wasn’t stable. I went back to the old Micor exciter and used a new 100 watt PA that I acquired from WB4HAP’s estate. I put two cooling fans on it to keep the PA cooled down. ALL of the repeaters have fans on them…heat is not a friend of transmitters.
THANK YOU once again for reading the blog. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to post on it much lately. And a special THANK YOU to those who recently contributed to the “WB4GBI repeater fund.” Although never solicited, these contributions helped buy the duplexer for 146.73 recently, and they help defray the regular and monthly expenses that all of the repeaters incur.
73 de Tim WB4GBI
