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!
Month: November 2016
11-15-16
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)
11-1-16
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.