Link Installation Hermanus 20170115

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ZS1TAF left home at 07:00. ZS1DDK, ZS1VDV, ZS1V and ZS1OR were collected and all the equipment was loaded in 2 vehicles.

The team arrived on site at about 09:45.

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Unpacking

The weather was windy, misty and there was some rain to complicate matters. The team all got stuck in and many of the tasks were executed in parallel.

Raining, ZS1TAF sealing new UHF antenna, ZS1V keeping rain off ZS1VDV tuning the duplexer

The first step was to confirm the correct SWR on the current VHF installation.  This was found to be an acceptable 1.2:1.

The previous repeater was removed and the hut cleaned out.  A Webb HD400 UHF dipole, fed by half inch Heliax and an LMR400 patch lead, was installed with lightning protection, for the link to Hanskop some 40km away.

ZS1TAF sealing the UHF antenna with ZS1OR

The duplexer was retuned which improved the insertion loss from 3 dB to 1.5 dB, and the rejection from 65 dB to 82 dB).

145.725 duplexer results after tuning by ZS1VDV

The UHF power output was measured at 2W and SWR on the antenna system after installation at 1.1:1.

As with many of the WCRWG repeater installations, the new link controller installation includes inside and outside temperature sensors as well as a DC voltmeter that can be queried by sending DTMF codes.

The repeater power output was measured at 10w after the duplexer.  Due to local noise levels, the squelch of the repeater had to be tightened somewhat.

The team left the site at about 13:00 and everybody was back home with the vehicles unloaded by around 16:00.

Repeater Status Report 20170103

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Greetings to all and Happy New Year!!

I sincerely hope that everyone has a wonderful year ahead and that, accordingly, it is a vast improvement over last year. Shouldn’t be too hard.. 🙂

My inbox has been almost painfully quiet since the last report of 2016, except for a gentle hint that all was not well with said report. Oh, it was very much the correct report but the date on the top was accidentally left unaltered. I blame the puppy that was chewing my ear 🙂

A corrected version is available on the website and the faulty version has been removed. Please feel free to collect a copy if you wish.

This week’s report, the first of the new year, most definitely has the correct date – I’ve checked if 15 times – and is as up-to-date as the reports that I have received. Enjoy!

wcrwg_status_report_20170103

Repeater Status Report 20161227

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Greetings!

A little birdie braved the dachshund puppy chewing on my ear to whisper that this status report should’ve been sent out last night! It then gapped it before the puppy could chomp…

Last one for the year, folks, starting up again on 2017-01-03. To all of you, and your families, a Prosperous and Safe New Year. 🙂

wcrwg_status_report_20161227