[PBARC] 442.175 Relay upgrade - 16 March 2007

[E. Glenn Wolf, Jr.]

All,

Per a request from Earl Ayres, I went to the 147.240 site and checked the
water levels in the batteries.  I'm glad I did.  A couple of cells barely
had any water on them and one cell already had exposed plates.  I topped the
cells off with water and will schedule either a monthly or a quarterly visit
to the site to check the water levels.

The 442.175 repeater was taken down this morning to swap out a solid state
relay with one recommended by the repeater manufacturer.  The repeater went
QRT at about 0900.  After looking at the wiring, I decided that the best
route would be to rewire two of the three runs and splice the third.  Once I
convinced myself that was the right way to go, the actual work only took
about 30 to 40 minutes.  The repeater was returned to service at 1000.  All
seems well as of this email.  Will have to see what programming of the
controller was lost, if any.

Let's hope that the relay "upgrade" solves our problem and we won't have
relay problems again.  We should know after about 6 months.

73,
Glenn
N5RN