What have you done for me lately? Chapter Three

What have you done for me lately?

 

Hello Blog readers…I hope you have had a wonderful Christmas Holiday and New Years. With the Vol Network broadcasts in full swing, I haven’t had time to do much with the repeaters, but I did manage to sneak up to the 146.625 site this evening and do some much needed maintenance!!

 

In case you haven’t noticed, the squelch setting on 146.625 had changed with the cold weather to the point that if it was “keyed up,” it would pass open squelch noise for several seconds before the squelch finally closed and the repeater went thru its normal drop-out cycle. With the impending weather coming, and knowing that I wouldn’t be able to make it to the site again for quite some time, I decided to make the trip this evening.

 

146.625 now has a tone (PL) decoder installed, so that if it experiences noise or interference on its input I know have the option of turning the decode tone on rather than just shutting it down. However, I had tried a tone decoder before and when I did it would make the repeater extremely difficult to access…almost like the sensitivity changed for the worst. Well, it wasn’t a sensitivity issue, but it was a logic problem with the decoder. After a combination of studying the schematic, making some voltage measurements, and some blind luck, I was able to modify the repeater itself to where the tone decoder worked properly for this application. It is not normal for a commercial repeater to have the ability to remotely enable/ disable its tone decode for something other than service, but now 146.625 has that capability! That way, if the repeater *does* have a noise or interference problem, I at least have a way to keep it in service without shutting it down. 145.47 and 146.73 already have this feature.

 

Now…what about the *other* repeaters?  I am waiting on the weather, my schedule, and the schedule of my preferred tower crew (Tower Services out of Hixson), to all come together at the same time! In January, that’s quite a task! But the plan is to do the following work:

 

1)    Remove and replace the .94 antenna and mount

 

2)    remove and replace the 146.73 antenna (see the previous blog entries)

 

3)    Remove and replace the 147.075 repeater Antenna.

 

4)    Install the 53.15 repeater and antenna at the 146.625 site

 

In addition, I have a surprise announcement to make soon about the addition of a repeater to the “fold…” Stay tuned…

 

Lastly, I have a question:  Are any of my repeater users interested in IRLP (Internet repeater linking project?) I am checking out some options, and I’m wondering if there are enough folks out there to make the purchase expense worthwhile. Please email me with your thoughts.

 

Well, that’s all I have for now. I hope you enjoy reading my sporadic blog entries, and that you will be back soon as I post updates and pictures!

 

73 de Tim WB4GBI