[ARC5] "I Hates Meeces Tuh Pieces!..."

[Glen Zook]

No chlordane inside the duplexer, just on the outside!  The ants did not build a nest in the first cavity from the transmitter, I found a few dead ones inside that cavity.  But, the second cavity was, literally, full of fire ants.  The repeater site was in, basically, a rural area over 30-miles north of Dallas, Texas.  Nowadays, what was the repeater site is in the middle of a large suburban housing development!  


Years ago, my business was located at the end of a General Telephone (now Verizon) line right at the city limits.  Ants kept getting into the multi-conductor main line on the telephone poles.  There were about 10-different customers on that line and, for a while, the linemen would cut out sections of the wire and pull in the slack a little bit.  Finally, they ran out of slack and then kept switching customers among the various, noisy, lines to the least noisy when that customer complained!  This was in Plano, Texas.  I moved my offices, in 1979, before they got around to replacing the line (this was after 10-years of dealing with the problem)! 


General Telephone had all sorts of problems at the time.  After I moved locations, they installed telephones that required going back to the original telephone set to hang up if the set had been put on hold and then picked up at another instrument.  This was completely different from the system that I had less than 2-miles away where any instrument could control the system.  I telephoned General's customer service to complain and was told that they had installed the latest system available (which they definitely had not).  I kept arguing with them and the representative would not budge.  Finally, I told her that I would have all my employees save their beer cans and I would supply the string so that General could update their system.  She hung up!  I worked my way up the "food chain" until I got someone to listen.  The next day there were several technicians on site and I got back the original system.


The Plano police department had 3-each 450 MHz repeaters (all on different frequencies) that had various functions controlled by tone remotes over telephone circuits.  Suddenly, at various times starting at 5:00 PM, the repeaters would start doing all sorts of strange things.  My company had the contract for the two-way radio systems and trying to solve the problems was proving daunting.  Finally, I put monitors on all 3 of the control circuits.  At certain times, there was all sorts of "cross talk" with any number of different tones.  Doing some investigation it was found that the times coincided with the changing of the long distance telephone rates.  We finally traced the problem to Ross Perot's EDS that was located on the far west side of the city.  Depending on where the end customer was located, and how crucial the data, remote customers were contacted and all sorts of data was sent over the telephone lines as the cost, of long distance, dropped.  General Telephone refused to do anything about the problem.  Finally, the FCC had to get involved and, since a public safety radio system was involved, General had to improve their system to eliminate the cross talk.
 
Glen, K9STH 
Website: http://k9sth.net

      From: Bruce Long <coolbrucelong at yahoo.com>
 To: Glen Zook <gzook at yahoo.com>; Richard Knoppow <1oldlens1 at ix.netcom.com>; "arc5 at mailman.qth.net" <arc5 at mailman.qth.net> 
 Sent: Friday, March 25, 2016 8:38 PM
 Subject: Re: [ARC5] "I Hates Meeces Tuh Pieces!..."
   
Gleni presume of course you used low loss, Mil spec microwave chlordane in the diplexer.

  
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