[SMCARA] 443.05 MHz repeater down due to lightning strike

[petebutt at comfac.com]

Folks,

  During the storm last Monday, we had a direct lightning strike to the
repeater tower (first time in 35 years!).  I was in Denver (Colorado) on
a business trip and Terrie described the hit as a huge flash-bang and
the entire house shook.

  Having spent the entire weekend doing damage assessment, I am amazed
that the house didn't catch on fire.  Anyway, there is nothing like
losing over twenty thousand dollars in equipment in a millisecond.  In
addition to the entire repeater (RF deck, ACC RC-850 controller, etc)
being smoke checked and permanently rendered junk, I lost my Ten Tec
Omni VII HF transceiver, three Dell Studio XPS computers, an ICOM
IC-229H, a Signalink USB, a Bearcat 785D scanner, our 50" plasma
television, three DirecTV HD boxes, the Verizon DSL modem and a Cisco
router.  At least that is what I know so far - all rendered useless junk
in the blink of an eye.

  So far, DirecTV came on Thursday and replaced all of the satellite gear.
 Verizon shipped us a new DSL modem that arrived on Friday.  I have
worked on two other computers and have been able to resurrect them with
new Netgrear third-party components from Staples to replace the blown
network adapters and VGA video cards.

  At this point, I'm going to take a wait and see attitude on the
repeater.  My gut feel is that I really don't want to spend the time,
effort and money to rebuild it at this time but I may change my mind
later.  Regardless, consider it "off the air" for the next few months.

  Don't you just love summer storms.

  Vr, Pete (WA3UMY)