Repeater Install
You may have heard all the racket on the repeater this weekend. If so you know we installed the new VXR-7000 at city hall. In the process of the install we discovered some problems that required attention. We fixed most of the problem but there is still some desense in the system as indicated by the long squelch tail. The desense was no doubt present with the other repeater but not detectable do to the lower output power. We’re planing to give the duplexer a through tune-up in the not too distant future. Even with the current desense, the new system seems to be performing as well or better than the other repeater.
Thanks to AD6TN, W6BRP, K6LUE, WB6DNX, N6RAS, W6GOS, N6AWQ, and KE6JDL for your help with the install.
Here’s a few pictures from the install.
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- VRX-7000 on it’s perch.
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- Rear of VRX-7000
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- VXR-7000 and Micor
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- Antenna farm atop city hall.
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- Buck and Peter
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- Tim and Pete working on the 2 meter repeater antenna
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- Tim, WD6AWP, our HB RACES Repeater Liaison
January 13th, 2009 at 10:02 am
The new repeater has a few differences that will take time to adjust to. The first is the lack of a courtesy tone at the end of a transmission. This makes it even more important than ever that you understand and use good radio skills when operating on the city hall repeater. It bears repeating once again that to effectively use any repeater system and especially our new city hall machine you MUST: (1) LISTEN to ensure no one is currently transmitting on the repeater, (2) KEY DOWN your Push-To-Talk (PTT) transmit button, (3) WAIT about 1/4 to 3/4 of a second for the repeater to capture your input signal and turn on the output transmitter, (4) SPEAK clearly your message or reply, (5) RELEASE the PTT button, (6) LISTEN for your reply.
Courtesy tones are used to remind us to LISTEN for other stations between our transmissions. This allows us to share the repeater frequency with all our communicators and that higher priority messages have the opportunity to be recognized even in the middle of use of the repeater frequency. Without the courtesy tone reminder we must develop and practice short pauses between our transmissions so they are automatic. The pauses don’t have to be long. Just a one second pause will allow another station to key-up and break into your conversation.