On Saturday, February 23rd the 146.430 repeater returned to the airwaves. The receiver problem has been fixed.
Early this morning John N3SPW drove the machine down to Scott N3XCC's QTH near Somerset PA. He looked it over and came to the same conclusion Justin N3OG did. Moments later he removed to old receiver and replaced it with a new one. After some tuning he tested the receive sensitivity and I took it back to Philipsburg. Around 7 PM Jim N3ONE and John N3SPW installed the repeater again and initial reports indicate it is working much better than it did before.
Again, the PL is not currently turned on, but if noise becomes a problem we may go that route. If we do turn it on, the PL will be 173.8.
Update 21-February-2008
On Thursday, February 21st, Dave AA3EJ, Justin N3OG, Jim N3ONE and John N3SPW were at the 146.430 repeater site and ran the machine through some tests. Justin brought his personal RF test gear which allowed us to isolate the ongoing receive sensitivity problem.
At this point, it is taking a signal strength of -90 DBm to break the squelch on the repeater. This figure should be in the -115 DBm to -125DBm range. The preamp is operational and not the problem. We were able to trace the receive sensitivity problem to the main receiver board. The duplexer and all cabling were also tested to rule out all potential problems.
The repeater was pulled from service and the next step is to get it back to Scott N3XCC for repair. As you’ll recall, Scott is the person who built the repeater for us. Check this web site periodically for updates.
Update 16-February-2008
On Saturday February 16th at approximately 15:50 hours PARA placed the new 146.430+ repeater into service from a temporary antenna. We are currently fine-tuning the machine, but initial coverage reports are encouraging. The PL board is currently turned off. If noise becomes an issue we will turn on the input PL. The Control Operator is Filip KB3MAI. Check this web site periodically for updates.
Update 30-January-2008
PARA is in the final stages of building a new repeater which will serve the Moshannon Valley / Philipsburg area. It will be a 2-meter band repeater operating on 146.430 output / 147.430 input with a CTCSS of 173.8. As of January 30th PARA is waiting for a new TX crystal to arrive from the manufacturer. When that arrives, the machine will be given a final tune-up and placed into service.
Due to the cold weather the repeater will be temporarily located at Jim N3ONE's QTH in Philipsburg with a temporary antenna on his 100 foot tower. In the spring it will be moved to a permanent location which will greatly expand the coverage area.
The repeater consists of a GE Master II E radio which has been modified for duplex operation. The "E" version stands for extended chassis which originally contained a second receiver. The second receiver has been stripped out and that space is where the controller was installed. This is the 110 watt flavor of Master II radio which PARA plans to run at 75 watts. Temperature compensated crystals were ordered so it would have as little drift as possible, as well as the optional CTCSS board to allow CTCSS operation which can be remotely activated and deactivated. A CTCSS of 173.8 will be used on the output and, if necessary, on the input as well. The controller is a NHRC-4 basic controller. The controller won't talk to you or make coffee, but it will provide basic repeater features with CW ID. The antenna is a Diamond F22-A with 6.7db of gain. Feedline will be ˝ inch hard-line. The duplexer is a Sinclair 4-can set and the power supply is a standard Astron RS35M.
Coordination of the repeater frequency pair has been applied for with the Western Pennsylvania Repeater Council (WPRC). We recently received word from WPRC that 146.430 does meet the minimum spacing standards for 2 meter band repeaters, although we do not yet have the official coordination paperwork in hand. This repeater will use a 1 MHz split, rather than the more typical 600 KHz split found on the 2 meter band. Some would consider this a non-standard split although it does conform to the current WPRC band plan as well as the ARRL optional band plan.
On Saturday, February 23rd the 146.430 repeater returned to the airwaves. The receiver problem has been fixed.