[RVRC] The Raritan Valey Radio Club's W2QW Repeater site

[Craig W Saums]

Raritan Valley Radio Club Members:


Update from the 'Hill"


The club had a unique opportunity today, Sunday July 17, 2016.  I received a call this morning from Paul - KC2VRJ informing me that he had made contact with Bryan Boyle - WB0YLE and Cully from Penn Wireless (sorry - I don't know Cully's callsign).  Everyone was heading to Sussex for the hamfest and our good friends from PA offered to stop at the Green Brook site on the way home to assist RVRC with a some testing and tuning.


Bryan, Cully and Paul met me at the site around 12:30.  Jim - KC2ZXP and Anna - KD2DUK joined us shortly after.  Cully brought his testing gear and dove in to sweep the 2 meter and 440 lines.  The 2M and 440 Duplexers were de-racked and put on the bench for analysis.  Cully re-tuned the 'cans' and everything was reinstalled. Paul, Bryan and Jim worked on some digital configuration stuff while the duplexer work was going on.  Anna provided her usual support and kept us on track.


The results of the testing were mixed.  The 2m system is in good shape generally.  The 440 lines showed a higher than expected SWR - so more work is needed there. Unfortunately the 440 Yaesu / digital gear is shut down until this gets resolved.  More will follow at the next meeting.  We are working on several things to try to see what can be done and when.


The pictures attached show the current status of the repeater relocation project.  This project started over 4 years ago and has been a much larger undertaking than any of us ever projected.  We have more to do but the major move work has been completed.  Most of the work was done by 3 PM.  Once again we owe a lots of 'Thank you's' to Bryan and Cully for helping the club.  My thanks to Paul for setting this up and thanks to Jim and Anna for helping to keep things going.


Pictures:


1 - The radio cabinets in the shed from the door way.
2 - The main cabinet showing (top down) the 2M duplexer, 2M Angle Linear Pre-Amp, ICOM 2M Repeater, the computer, 440 duplexer, 440 Angle Linear Pre-Amp,            Yaesu Fusion (440) repeater, Henry 2M power amplifier, Twin Astron 40A Power Supplies.
3 - The rear view shows some of the coax connections, the rear of the duplexers can be seen and the EZ Gate Power managers.
4 - The Workbench area and some of the storage space above
5 - Another view of the room layout.


It was a good day overall.  We have a good understanding of the feedline condition, some things to investigate regarding the 440 antenna (SWR) and a general cleanup after the move.  Also of interest, the temperature in the building was very reasonable with the roof fan pulling lots of air through.  


Susan can up for a little while too.  Thanks to Susan and the Lund family for all their patience.


Thanks to everyone that helped today.


Craig Saums
AC2FE