[FADCA] East / West Trunk

[John H. Green]

Hi All�.
Just to keep everyone up to date let me fill you in on one of the 
happenings of the Palm Beach Packet Group. Starting a little over a 
month ago John (WB4MOZ) and myself gave a talk the Big Lake Amateur 
Radio Club in Clewiston on March 30th about the use of packet radio in 
emergency communications. First I�ll thank Bud for his power point 
presentation I plagiarized. Next we showed pictures of the Lake Harbor 
Switch (see FADCA WEB site) then gave a demo of TelPac all in the 
presence of the head of the EOC for Henry County. Also we promoted the 
PBPG and solicited for a site to complete the cross state link with 100% 
reliability.

After the meeting one of the club members Pete Sutton (W9VDS) offered us 
a location just SE of LaBelle � exactly where we needed a site. The next 
week John, my wife, & I surveyed the site and found it to be originally 
a UHF paging location with a DB-413 (UHF exposed 8 dipole array) on top 
of a 140-foot ROHN 25 tower. This is also the location of the Labelle 
repeater (145.470). As you will be able to see from pictures to be 
posted, the building was nearly overgrown with weeds as well as the 
first thirty feet of tower. Nevertheless there was real potential here 
especially since we wanted to complete the link from Lake Harbor to Ft. 
Myers on UHF.

With some luck at the same time John came across two real nice racks 
(the second one is another story) that were unloaded into my garage. I 
spent the next week preparing the cabinet for the eventual installation 
of an FPAC SWTICH. For now as time was short we will install just a 
plain Digi as we want to get something in place quickly. We were also 
making space available for the LaBelle repeater to be incorporated in 
the same rack. Also prepared was an antenna grounding bracket for up to 
six antennas (the repeater will use two arrestors). Also located were 
four, six volt batteries used in telephone/microwave system emergency 
power system. By series/paralleling them we end up with over 220 Ah of 
reserve and also supply emergency power to the repeater.

On early Wednesday April 23rd John, Bob Pasquale (WD9ATM), Andy Czermann 
(KF4ATC) and myself loaded everything in the back of John�s truck and 
headed west arriving on site about 10am.
Soon Pete met us there while we were unloading. Bob and I started 
removing the weeds on the tower side of the building, as they were so 
overgrown we couldn't see the tower! Pete brought an electric hedge 
trimmer, which made short work of the thick vines, and after a few hours 
the building was stripped of the growth.

Meanwhile Andy and John were busy mounting the antenna mounting bracket, 
running transmission lines in the building, grounding, completing the DC 
power wiring to the rack, and installing the batteries. As we were on a 
tight time schedule the best part of the day was when all the equipment 
was powered it all worked. We quickly loaded everything in the truck, 
thanked Pete for all his help and headed down the road only to get lost 
in the maze of roads in this future development. Oh yes the important 
stuff � 441.000 W9VDS-8 is now on the air as a digi. This provides a 
path from the East coast to the West coast by connecting to Lake Harbor 
(561996) and then connecting to Fort Meyers via W9VDS-8 ( c 2:w4lx-2 v 
w9vds-8).
Thanks again to all who helped make this possible.

73 Doug wb4kgy