[K4RY] AUARC Maintenance Update: 01 October 10

[wb4lnm at aol.com]

Spent the afternoon looking at various areas requiring maintenance or improvement at K4RY.


For the early part of the afternoon, I was up on Haley Center roof (great view!) looking at our repeaters and antennas with the campus architect from Facilities.  The good news is that we won't need to do any moving of our antennas for their re-roofing project (now scheduled for spring break '11).  


I also helped her identify other radio systems up on the roof.  Our 440 repeater antenna was easy to identify, but the VHF repeater wasn't so easy, as there are 3 each 4 bay VHF antennas on the roof, and unfortunately, none are marked, nor are their cables.  That will have to change.  I did take some pictures, but I don't think the reflector will forward attachments, so if you want to see them, drop me an email.  There also appears to be a 4 element 220 MHz Yagi pointed towards Broun Hall.  I seem to remember from earlier emails that there were some experiments with linking, but that was much before I moved here.  Can anyone shed some light on why that antenna is up there?


There is a well-weathered Ringo Ranger sitting on a home-made side mount off the WEGL-FM tower.  My guess is that it might have been hooked up to an EBS receiver at one time, and it looks like there may still be one in the WEGL-FM rack.  If so, it sure isn't working because the coaxial cable has broken itself off and is dangling in the wind.  


If anyone reading the reflector was around when the equipment / antennas were installed, I'd like to talk with you.  The only controller I saw in the rack was a 1970's vintage ACC RC-96.  The UHF repeater appeared to be a Vertex (Yaesu), but it was unclear what the VHF repeater was, since it seemed to be behind a home brew front panel.  I may have these mixed up because I did not have the time to look at where the cabling went from the radios to the duplexers.  I don't know which of them, or both, are connected to the RC-96.  


The school contractor (TigerTransit), club, police and WEGL racks are really a mess and strongly need some sort of joint agreement for neatening things up.  There is a lot of old surplus equipment in there, including what I remember was the 10 watt transmitter from 1971 (yes, I worked on it back then), and several old antennas.  This is a LOT easier than working on things up on the roof.  


Ok, on to the Club shack where I only had limited time to work.  I have replaced the terminals on the Alinco DR-110 to be used for the iGate so it can be connected to the Astron power supply.  It seems to power up fine and even with the internal antenna was hearing a lot of traffic on 144.390.  However, ALL of the front panel lamps are burnt out, so seeing anything on the panel is extremely difficult.  I could only see the frequency with light reflected just the right way.  Since I have replaced the bulbs in several other Alinco radios in the past couple of years, I brought it back home for repair of that problem.  I generally use LED's rather than incandescent bulbs so they generally won't fail again during the life of the radio.  Sounds like it should work well as an initial iGate receiver, though.  


I again took a look at the Heath twins and am convinced that the first thing they need is a replacement of all the electrolytic caps.  I think I mentioned in an earlier email that it is not unusual for these to dry out.  DigiKey has some similar replacements that I will order this weekend.  I also made some notes about what tools, hardware, adapters and cables to bring back to get the place looking and working a bit neater.  


Questions?  Please drop me an email here.  I had hoped to be back on Monday, but I think my Merit Badge class with the local Scout troop may prevent that until Tuesday or Wednesday.  


73


John...
WB4LNM


John H. Klingelhoeffer














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