8/8 Update

It's the 30th anniversary of the first night game in the Friendly Confines of Wrigley Field in Chicago.  The game was called due to rain and was replayed on 8/9.  Many remember the "8/8/88" thing but forget that it was a rain-out.

The SCARS Tech Committee was almost rained out, or more accurately, lightning-ed out on their trip to the repeater site today.  However, the electrically charged clouds moved out and even the rain clouds were largely gone before the task force arrived at the site.

Unfortunately, the changes we made a couple months ago had no effect on the interference we've been suffering on the VHF system (147.06 MHz).  So today, the loaner duplexers (thanks to N5MS) were removed and replaced by the club's WACOM duplexer.  While there, the NORMAN APRS digipeater was also placed back in service.

We had also removed the Arcom RC-210 repeater controller (the device that gives us the auxiliary functions) as part of the diagnostic process.  While it was out, we had it updated by the vendor with their now-standard more capable CPU.  Embedded CPUs in this type of situation have built-in RAM and the new unit has a lot more of that (I don't have numbers) meaning more possible functions - the software author had run out of space in the old CPU's memory.  The real-time clock module was also "flashed" (new firmware) which hopefully means that the clock (and therefore the scheduling features) will work correctly now - the clock was a poor time-keeper in the past which is why it had been shut off.

Unfortunately, we were unable to communicate with the controller over its serial console which means we couldn't pull the config that's in there (to make sure it was correct and as we expected) nor could we properly set the clock - you'll probably note that we've moved to the Pacific Time Zone.  We'll get back out there in the near future and see if we can't beat it into submission.

In the meantime, the interference is still a problem.