[GCARC] 2 meter repeater is back on air!

[thewrightplacenj]

Our 2 meter repeater is operational and back on the air!
Give it a try (147.180 <standard +600 offset>, PL 131.8)
But note: we had to temporarily take the 442.1 repeater offline to do it.
Read on if you are interested in the details.

All of you who suspected something might be wrong topside were right.

Today, Al (kb2ayu), Keith (w2erp), and Jim (n2gxj) paid a visit to the Pitman tower to see what was up.
>From the ground, Keith was able to identify what appeared to be a possible open in the 2M antenna assembly. For every 20 watts up the cable, 10 were getting reflected back.  This meant a climb to the top to see what was up.  Sure enough, after the climb, Al found that the cable between the hardline and the antenna was damaged (the connector was nearly sheared off).  Likely a casualty of a clumsy workman involved with all the continued new cell phone install work going on up there. Anyway, that's not a cable we had spares of, so we took the 1284.4 machine off the air, and attempted to use the 1284.4 MHz hardline run to topside to make the connection.  However, there's a special right angle connector topside that made that not possible, so we made a decision to temporarily take the 442.1 machine offline instead, and switch the 2M antenna (which did not look nor measure as damaged) over topside to use the 442 connector cable and coax down to the base of the tower instead.  In the tower base, down where the repeaters are, we then connected the 442 coax to the 2M test equipment and repeater. That checked out and worked great. The repeater is now putting out a full 45 watts up with negligible reflected power. 
So until we get the replacement cable with proper connectors and can install topside, temporarily 442.100 will be off the air so that the 147.180 repeater can be in service. 

We'll discuss it more at our Thursday January 2 club meeting (note that for our January meeting, we are meeting the day after Wed New Year's day).
If there are further questions that you have before then, you can direct your questions to Al (kb2ayu), or myself (n2gxj) and we'll try to answer.

'73's