[GCARC] 2 meter repeater is back on air!

[Dave MacDonald - WB3JOY]

Great job by all.  Thanks for sticking with it.

--Dave, WB3JOY

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "thewrightplacenj" <thewrightplacenj at aol.com>
To: <gcarc at mailman.qth.net>; <thewrightplacenj at aol.com>
Sent: Saturday, December 07, 2013 2:37 PM
Subject: [GCARC] 2 meter repeater is back on air!


>
> 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 th
> e 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
>
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