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Tech
ReportWhat started out as a quite month got more exciting as the days went by. Our first experience found that the IRLP simplex frequency 147.570 caused weak interference into VE3KSR after months of flawless operation. After some quick math by Paul, VE3SY, the node operator of IRLP, it showed that the blending of the repeater frequency and the IRLP simplex frequency resulted in a mix of the two exactly the same as the input frequency of KSR. Why it decides to just show up at this time is still a mystery.
The tech committee provided a tuned band pass cavity on the IRLP frequency and Paul installed it at his home QTH. This seemed to solve the problem.
As some of you have heard, Paul's tower took a direct hit of lightning during a storm this month, resulting in considerable damage to personal radio's, computers, Internet facilities as well as the IRLP node. Paul took some pictures of the damage to his antenna
(see shredded tri-band vertical). Hats off to Paul for getting the IRLP back on the air so quickly using some reserve equipment, but I suspect he will be on a longer road replacing other pieces that were damaged.
The technical committee is experimenting with some software that will enable good quality voice announcements of clubs activities to be transmitted on any of our clubs repeaters. You may have heard this month's message of the October clubs meeting date, using the volunteered broadcast quality voice of VE3ETK Bill Graham. Thanks Bill for providing us with the first announcement. We hope that this feature will benefit our members by providing voice updates of current clubs events and activities in natural audio on our repeaters.
As a last item, I had the opportunity to attend a Brantford Amateur Radio Club meeting where the executives of that club had voted to continue to share autopatch information with KWARC members for another year. Their patch will remain closed, however, their codes have been made available to us. At the same time, we also have received notification from the Simcoe Club providing KWARC with similar privileges.
Our membership value continues to improve. For information on these agreements, and how to use them, please e mail myself va3bny@rac.ca 748-0445
I wonder what October has in store for us.
VA3BNY De Ben Sasiela
KWARC Tech Chairman
va3bny@rac.ca
748-0445