[NCARC] New repeaters are up!

[Steve Henry]

QST to hams on the front range.....

At long last, the new NCARC 145.115 and 447.275 repeaters are now up and
operational!   The 145.115 and 447.275 both have the same setup:

- Vertex 7000 50W repeater with digital frequency synthesis
- TS-64 input tone decode and output tone encode with macro controlled
output tone frequency.  We use this to select either a 91.5 Hz tone for
severe weather and other emergency use or a 100 Hz tone for normal
operation.
- SCOM 7K repeater controller
- Re-tuned duplexers
- Updated hard line and coax connections.  This should solve the repeater
self-triggering causing the 145.115 to frequent transmit static.
- Ground connection including a polyphaser lightning protection unit
- Output isolator unit.  This prevents reflected signals coming back down
the transmit antenna from mixing in the final and being rebroadcast at sum
and difference frequencies.

George (AB0SF), Willis (WA5VRL) and myself (N7GN) journeyed up to the
Horsetooth site Saturday to swap out the old Motorola units and install the
new ones.    In preparation for this trip:  Rick (W0RCY) very kindly allowed
us to borrow his 4 wheel drive truck to get us to and from the site, Minor
(K7YJ) was instrumental in getting the rack mount unit built up and
operational, Virgil (W0INK) adjusted the 440 duplexers, and I was
responsible for the interface/tone control boxes between the Vertex
repeaters and 7K repeater controllers.

I think we are all very lucky to have the professional expertise of both
George and Willis at repeater installation.  To me the site and installation
are quite professional and I think you will be impressed at the "new look"
of the NCARC repeaters.  More importantly, I'm confident we will have much
higher up-time reliability on the repeaters from this point forward.

Of course, what has made this possible is your active support of NCARC in
lots of different ways.  Through keeping your membership current,
encouraging new members, helping out at hamfests, and participating in NCARC
meetings and other activities----  as a club we have been able to upgrade to
state of the art repeater equipment.    Keep up the good work and keep
renewing those memberships!

Lastly, please send signal reports to this reflector so we can get a good
idea of the coverage range, audio levels, etc.  It's very likely we will
need to make some adjustments to the repeaters.   I'm already thinking we
need to turn down the CW, DTMF, and speech synthesizer audio levels on the
145.115 as these messages seem significantly louder than normal audio.  I'm
thinking we need to increase the overall audio for all formats on the
447.275.  What do you think?  I haven't heard much activity yet on either
repeater and will wait to hear some of your reports.  We will also need to
wait out the weather (snow is coming) before going up to make fine tuning
adjustments.

Willis will publish a few pictures in the next newsletter including a link
to additional pictures on the website.  At our next club meeting (Oct 15th)
we will review with you the setup and discuss next steps.


'73

-Steve Henry, N7GN
NCARC President