2007-04-05

Almost all here

We're still searching for a permanent cabinet. This reporter was up at Total Radio (a Motorola Service Station) in OKC last week to have an NMO mount installed in a vehicle and noted a number of surplus cabinets in their shop. The tech committee may send an expedition there to see if they'd be willing to part with any of them and whether or not any are suitable for our use.

The repeater itself, the controller and Arcom accessories, power supply, and most of the smaller components have arrived so assembly should start soon.

Again, it will still be a while until the equipment is assembled, tested, programmed, installed and tuned, so don't expect to hear the new machine this weekend!

2007-04-02

And ... we're back!

Ken KC5OU and I went out to the repeater site. We found that three fuses had given their lives in service to the club. The VHF, UHF, and NØELS digipeater are all now back in service!

Your reporter thanks Ken for his "tour of the cables"!

Repeater outage

As you are likely aware, the W5NOR repeaters, as well as the Norman Digipeater, ceased to function Friday, March 30, at about 1915 local time. Fortunately, this was after the severe weather net had gone into standby mode!

Since all three transmitters are off the air, we believe that this is power-related. Once we have secured site access, we will visit the site and make a further diagnosis and repairs as necessary.

In the meantime, Ken N5KUK has set up a temporary repeater using the Stadium Remote and some parts of his own at N5KUK. This repeater uses the -0.600 MHz input (146.4600 MHz) and outputs on the usual 147.0600 MHz. Please note that service on this repeater may be interrupted as we work to test and repair the main repeater.

Note: the temporary system is in Carrier Squelch ("CSQ") mode meaning that no tone is needed to access the repeater but more importantly, no tone is transmitted! Therefore, if your transceiver is set to listen for the usual 141.3 Hz tone on receive, you will not hear the temporary system.

Your Technical Committee will provide updates as they become available.

Thanks for your patience!

Update 4/2: The temporary system is down in anticipation of the regular system coming up. N5UWY and KC5OU will be making a site visit over the lunch hour and will hopefully have some good news shortly thereafter. Hopefully.