Maintenance Hawequa 20170617

Posted on by

Jan, ZS1VDV went to Hawequa to investigate why the 650 VHF repeater was not working.  The worst was suspected, that the mast did not survive the storms.  Luckily this was not the case.  The mast and building was in good condition.

It was found that the repeater was on, but as soon as it started to transmit it restarted.  After long debugging, it was found that the repeater was not at fault but the dc power distribution box and power supply.  The fault was corrosion on the conductors in the connectors (dust and soot blasted in by the storms, as well as intermittent power would have caused this), as well as crackling sound in the power supply.

The power supply will have to be replaced on a next visit and serviced.

It was great to see the water flowing off the mountain.

Jonaskop maintenance

Posted on by

On Saturday 2017-05-20, Paul ZS1V and Rassie ZS1YT headed to Jonaskop to investigate a problem with crackly audio on the 145.675 Jonaskop repeater and to attend to some pre-winter preventative maintenance.

The weather was sunny, but cold, with a fresh cold breeze that could be felt as soon as one was a few meters up the tower.  Most of the area to the South and East of Jonaskop was under thick cloud.

Overberg under a blanket

The SWR of the VHF antenna was found to be good.  On previous visits water had been found in the connection between the feedline and the 4-stack antenna, despite there being a good water seal at that point.  The phasing harness has a plastic tube section and extra precautions against moisture entering the system at that point were taken.

The link controller was also attended to, and audio crackle eliminated by re-seating some of the ICs.

An adjustment was made to the repeater configuration to make it go back to the desired setting after a power interruption.