Salinas Valley Repeater Group - W6DXW

Well everyone, It was a long 10 hour day at Fremont Peak yesterday, but I’m pleased to announce that the antenna installation is complete. The new 4 Bay Dipole is located at the 140ft level of the tower, fed with 1-1/4 inch hardline and hearing many of you on the air testing it though out the day proves that the system is covering as expected. The coverage map of the system has also been added to the website. I would like to encourage everyone to try the system out! 441.900 + PL 110.9 and for P25 NAC $293.

Everyone, I am pleased to announce the launch of our new site and latest addition to the Salinas Valley Repeater Group linked system. This new site will greatly enhance our coverage in south Santa Clara County, San Benito County and the surrounding areas.
Please keep in mind that the system is on a temporary antenna so performance will be greatly enhanced once the scheduled tower climb is completed.

Frequency: 441.900MHz + 110.9, NAC $293 

In the early 2000’s Sean W6MOW installed a UHF repeater on Fremont Peak. That system in combination with Mike W6WLS on Empire Grade is what gave the spark for the repeater system that we have today. Those two systems were the source many years of fun conversations and interesting times on the radio. If it wasn’t for all the cool people that I’ve met because of ham radio that took the time help me over the years the Salinas Valley Repeater Group wouldn’t exist. I would like to take a moment to say Thank You to everyone who has volunteered their time, knowledge, equipment, and provided us with the tower sites that makes this system what it is today.

Today I’m pleased to announce a new addition to the Salinas Valley Repeater Group, Harry W6HPB and I spent most of the day configuring the new Prunedale repeater site. We still have lots more do to but we are on the air, this will phase out the 442.775 system located at my house and bring added coverage to the Prunedale, Salinas and surrounding areas on UHF.

The new frequency is 444.675 + PL 110.9 Please update your radios with the new frequency and give it a try!

Well its been a long 2 weekends working on the Meadow Lakes VHF box. We have final achieved the required amount of isolation to get rid of the desensitization happening to the VHF repeater from not just our transmitter but the FM broadcast transmitters at the site.

It took splitting the antenna system with two Telewave ANT150D3 2 bay dipole antennas one mounted at the top of the tower at 80 feet and the other one mounted at 60 FT. Three Telewave TPRD-1556 pass reject cans and a DCI filter 4 MHz window filter final bring the noise floor down to a usable level with two TPRD-1554 cans on the transmitter.

The bottom line is the receive performance has improved since the original launch of that repeater in ~ may 2016. But unfortunately the usable noise floor at that site is still quite high. But over all I’m pleased the repeater was usable with 50 mW on a handheld in the parking lot of Starbucks. Something that could not be done before.

Special thanks to K6WGJ & Son for providing us with the site and tower climb, to WA6PKY for the Telewave ANT150D3, W6WLS for the DCI filter, and K6TS for the extra Telewave cans. KC6UDC, W6WEB, and K7MJD for coming out last weekend to install the antenna and take some pics!

— So try it out guys the hard work has been done its time to have fun!

Today marks a noteworthy moment for the Salinas Valley Repeater Group, as we put to rest the 2 Meter, 440, 900 Mhz repeaters located at our soon to be former site in Pacific Grove. This site gave us the start 5 years ago that brought W6DXW to the Monterey Bay. As we have expanded to cover areas I certainly never considered and gained tower sites I could only dream of this site has become outdated and under utilized.

Effective this afternoon, 
147.735, 440.450, 927.0375 are OFF AIR.

The frequencies and equipment from this site will bring forth new systems and locations in the future.
With our friends on the hill (WB6ECE RG) that provide the 2 key tower sites and the microwave backbone for covering the Monterey Bay, I am confident the discontinuation of this location will not hinder our coverage in the slightest and free up resources for our expansion in the future.

73 to PG.

Some of you guys may have heard or maybe haven’t – I am pleased to announce the addition of the KF6FGL repeaters to the Salinas Valley Repeater Group. KE6STH and KF6FGL have been working hard on adding two new repeaters to the network located at Bear Mt. (Fresno). One is linked analog and one is linked digital P25. 
This site brings two full time linked analog and digital systems allowing for simultaneous traffic in both modes at one site. Unlike some systems where the repeaters are configured in ‘mixed mode’ operation. Please give them a try! I will also be making coverage maps for the new site and hope to have them on the website some time over the weekend.

The Frequencies:
443.775 + 110.9 (analog) 
443.875 + NAC $293 (P25 Digital).

With a big round of applause for KE6STH for his relentless work to innovate our IP linking that makes our analog and digital audio sound great. I don’t think we would be half as cool with our his hard work.

I’l tell you guys there is nothing more satisfying after a hard days work at the tower site than hearing you all enjoy yakking it up about 40 different ways to BBQ chicken or how bad the traffic is on HW 17…

The N6WZ 440.125 and W6DXW 147.300 Meadow Lakes repeaters are now back on the air again! Thank you Lauren, Zac, and Mike for going up to the site with me today. We removed the New Mar 35 Amp power supply, and replaced with a GE ferroresonant power supply. That should keep us on the air until we figure out why the fuse is blowing on the New Mar.

I would like to say thank you N6IB and N6VQL for going up to meadow lakes and installing a power supply for us to use until we get it replaced. With out the support we get from our little ham radio community, Salinas Valley Repeater Group would not be on the air as we know it today. On 11/24 at around 4PM, the repeaters went off the air due to a power supply failure. I’m happy to say the site is now backup on the air!

Today KE6STH and I installed a Motorola Quantar for the KE6STH 443.575 Repeater in San Jose. This seems to have greatly improved the RX sensitivity on the repeater system. We can kiss the Yaesu fusion – DR-1X and all the problems we had with it goodbye! Say hello to Motorola P25 in the Santa Clara valley! 
On the SVRG system there are now 3 repeaters capable of P25 mixed mode. 
442.750 + PL 110.9 NAC $293 (Empire Grade)
443.575 + PL 110.9 NAC $293 (San Jose)
147.300 + PL 110.9 NAC $293 (Prunedale) 

11/1/2016|

We’ve had a few issues over the last week, first the microwave link has been intermittent to the WB6ECE 147.270 repeater on Mt.Toro. The W6DXW 442.750 had a few issues as well, causing its performance to degrade after the rain.

First the router that connects Mt. Toro to the rest of the world has had problems causing connection drops, Matthew went to the Mt. Umunhum site to correct the issue, I’m happy to say the link is back up now.
With the rains over the past week, we got water in the 7/8 hard line that was replaced during our most recent tower climb for the W6DXW 442.750 repeater on Empire grade. Water entered into the hard line, thankfully it was the lower 7/8 connector, this caused a 5.2-1 SWR at the duplexer. The Motorola Quantar detected the high SWR and faulted lowering the systems transmitter power to 2 watts. Zac K6ZWA and I went to the site today to correct the issue by reinstalling and sealing the connector again, The SWR is back to 1.2-1. Hopefully it stays that way.

We have also moved the Asterisk computer used for linking the repeaters at that site, over to a raspberry Pi correcting yet another issue we had, previously when the power failed at the site the former Intel atom computer would not power back up when AC was restored.

I would like to thank K6ZWA for going to the site with me to repair the hard line connector and swap computers, KE6STH for all his continued hard work on our Asterisk system that makes our linked repeater system possible, KE6SQG for the repeater sites and microwave network he provides and graciously lets the Salinas Valley Repeater Group utilize. I’d also like to thank the countless others that have volunteered there time and hard work and equipment that make our repeater system what it is today.