[AReU] Repeater Maintenance

[Tony Stone]

This morning after breakfast at the Village Inn in Brandon; Ed, Wayne and I
traveled to the Brandon repeater site. After a few minutes getting through
the
security at the gate we went to the site and proceeded to do routine
maintenance
on the VHF and UHF repeaters. In addition to the routine maintenance we
added
a preamplifier to the VHF receiver. This preamplifier was purchased after a
preamp
that I had built in the early 80's for satellite work had failed. This unit
had provided
many years of good service but it finally gave up. This should improve the
receive
capabilities a good bit. A circulator was installed on the VHF transmitter
to
eliminate the raucous intermod that we have been sporadically experiencing.
Hopefully these additions will improve the VHF receiver performance.

Various tests were performed to fine tune the frequency of both the UHF and
VHF
receivers and transmitters. Deviation levels were also checked for voice
modulation
and CTCSS modulation. Reflected power levels indicated that the antenna was
in
good shape as well as the feed line.

All said we spent about three hours checking just about everything that we
could
think of.

Wayne supplied his super Motorola service monitor and signal generator
combined
which really reduced the time required to perform the tests. My antiquated
equipment
does the job but at the expense of a few hours of diddling with the knobs to
get
everything right. We had a great time and hopefully improved the performance
of
both the UHF and VHF repeaters.

73

Tony