[CTSARA] How Many Hams Does It Take ...

[Jon Perelstein]

... to screw in the bolts that hold a repeater in the rack.

Answer:  Four.  One to hold the screw and three to turn the rack.

No joke.

The way the Icom 440 at the hospital is designed, it's almost impossible to
get the bolt into the hole in the rack, so we were turning the whole
enclosure to be able to get the bolt started.

Many thanks to Chris KB1QXR and Tina KB1UOB for their work in putting the
440 back into the rack, testing it, rewiring the power feed to the Arcom
(which we think/hope will eliminate the unexpected controller resets), and
replacing the enclosure's fan.

Under relatively new hospital procedures, one of the building engineers has
to accompany us up to the repeater because of the conditions in the area in
which the repeater is located (lots of wires, cables, hoses, hot hot water
pipes and other stuff that's easy to trip on).  While we were walking to
the equipment, the engineer assigned to us today mentioned that years ago
he had wanted to get his license but just couldn't learn to copy Morse
Code.  A big smile lit his face when we said "oh -- the FCC dropped the
Morse Code requirement a couple of years ago" .  He clocked out for lunch,
came back and spent close to an hour talking with us about what's involved
in getting a license and also helped us with the work (thus the fourth
person involved in the effort).  We've sent him links to material and
suggested books and I think we'll have an additional club member in a
couple of months.

73s
Jon
WB2RYV