 |
|
Technical
Report
This
is the last report prior to our summer club break, so I would like to
wish everyone a great summer, and lets keep the ham bands busy all
summer long. During the past month, I have continued to make
improvements to the clubs systems starting with the move of our club
repeater VE3RCK to a new site and antenna at Manheim. The antenna is an
almost new, Sinclair 210C4 located abt 125 ft on the tower structure,
and is oriented somewhat in a south direction. This will compliment
repeater VE3KSR that favours a north pattern, and RCK will provide club
member's great coverage along the 401 and south areas of Kitchener.
Performance should not have degraded to the north. During a recent trip
to Owen Sound, I was able to operate RCK just north of Mt Forest along
Hwy 6 quite well. I don't believe that we had coverage in this area
before, so we have gained a bit here. The repeater has been mounted on a
rack system and connected to the clubs back up batteries at this site.
Manheim building is also equipped with a diesel automatic generation
system, which kicks in after a few minutes if power is lost. We have
called the telephone company to move our line to the new site so we can
continue to offer the speed dial and patch privileges to our members.
During your travels around our KW area, please try out the new coverage
of RCK repeater, and send me your comments.
The NASA transmitter worked just great during the last shuttle broadcast, and will be now dedicated to this service from now on. This transmitter has been set to operate with 70 watts of power, and has been installed at the Queen St. club site on a 2 bay VHF antenna. We have programmed RCK repeater with a message announcing the new frequency of 147.510 for all our NASA listeners. There is also a power back up system on this transmitter donated by John VE3DOS, Thanks John for your donation. Our NASA downlink member, Terry, VE3NEJ will fine-tune the next broadcast if it is needed.
Field Day is coming up really fast, and again we have privileges to operate from Doon Pioneer Village. We encourage all club members to visit the operators during field day operations, use the side gravel road to gain access to the site, and park by the old steam locomotive. That area is reserved for ham parking. There are a few bands still open to anyone that wants to participate. Call Fred VE3OQB our field day co coordinator to reserve your favourite band, or just come and help do some contacts. I hope to see some of the newer hams there this year. Even if you do not have HF privileges, you are able to operate and make contacts under the supervision of the station operator.
I have been told that some of the operators may have had some problems operating the phone patch on VE3KSR. Incomplete calls, or wrong numbers seem to be the complaint. We are looking into this, but we would like to remind users that this repeater requires a strong DTMF tone to accurately activate the phone patch. If you have a marginal signal, you may not be strong enough for solid reception into the repeater. Use high power on your rig when using the patch option.
The IRLP service is performing great, and I hope everyone has had an opportunity to try out this system. Our IRLP manager and provider, Paul VE3 Sugar Yankee, has done an outstanding job. Users must appreciate the time and efforts that members like Paul, and Terry, have dedicated to providing services like we have available to us.
During the summer, we will be keeping an eye on our repeaters, Wx reporting, packet, APRS, and other services. If you notice a problem, please use our clubs web site and complete a trouble report. This gets sent to the tech committee immediately and automatically.
73 everyone
de Ben VA3BNY
Technical Chairman
KWARC