I’m pleased to announce the antenna system work was very successful yesterday at our Meadows Lakes tower site. First I would like to thank everyone who came out to the site yesterday, our tower climbers AI6MS, W6KWF, the ground crew consisting of KE6STH, N6WZ, K6ZWA, and our local Telewave engineer WA6PKY. With out their help I don’t think we could have pulled this off.
Yesterday we found the UHF antenna system had water in the jumper between the antenna and the 7/8 heliax , the helical resonators in the UHF repeater where about 5-6 DB down from the peak of the pass response. Probably due to the original tuning that was centered on our old RX frequency of 447.625.
On to the good stuff!
A 4-bay UHF Dipole was installed at the top of the 80 Ft tower fed with 7/8 heliax. The UHF bandpass filter was re-tuned for 3 DB insertion loss to aid in protecting the front end of the 18 DB gain pre-amp that was installed yesterday. This has greatly improved coverage. Testing on my way home last night from Fresno I had full HT coverage on the UHF system from Fresno to Pacheco Pass even going thru Los Banos!
The VHF system also has seen a major improvement with the Installation of a 2-bay VHF dipole at 60 Ft on the tower and is now working in locations that it could not be heard at all before.This system also has a run of 7/8 heliax run up to the antenna.
I would like to thank all who donated to making the VHF antenna possible. The hours of hard work are starting to pay off.
I’d like to ask everyone to please give these systems a try over the next few weeks so we can get a more accurate idea of what coverage is like.
