W8ECG Repeater in Fostoria. MI 443.450
What's been happening by date: 2000 entries
11-29-2000 - Went to the repeater to add a command to allow users to test their touch tones to see if some radios are not generating tones properly and found controller 2 (RI-300) with lights flashing all over the place on the front panel, I went ahead and uploaded the new program to controller 1 and brought controller 2 back with me and called Greg at Pacific Research Solutions and left a message with his business to call me back.
11-09-2000 - We have had an on going situation concerning controller 2 and the remote base radio (this is the radio that connects the 443.450 repeater to a 2-meter repeater to extend coverage) we believed that we had a programming error since we had a similar situation that caused the DVR to stop working on controller 1. We have emailed the tech at Pacific Research Solution and have not came to any conclusions yet.
10-11-00 - Finally got the boom truck, the driver sat out at the site in a rain storm the first time because dispatch did not call him in time to tell him I would not do the the work in the rain, then on the second try the driver brought a boom truck that had a 55 foot reach and to the tower top is 66 feet, then I got a call yesterday that a truck was free and so I headed to the site to find the truck broke down on the drive up to the repeater, after the driver called a mechanic and he looked at the truck we were on our way again. The reach on this truck was 65 feet and a lot of reaching had to be done plus lowering the mast to actually swap antennas, "but it is completed". We do thank Owen Tree Service for the boom truck/trucks.
09-09-00 - Lots of work at the site, added 2 more sections of tower for a total height to antenna bottom of 66 feet. Antenna is now connected via 9913 coax and has "N" connectors. Also found the repeater had been running on the battery system for some time, the Motorola power supply had blow it's pass transistors. We were lucky the 22 volt output because of the blow pass transistors had not damaged the repeater or controller. We replaced the Motorola with a Pyramid with build in crow bar protection. Repeater seems to get a lot more distance but also changed antenna from the GP-9 to a GP-98 and the radiation angle is higher and so less coverage close to the tower, I have contracted a bucket truck to change the antenna back to the GP-9. New pictures are coming soon.
08-17-00 - Tried to use DVR the other night and controller responded "error", tried to re-setup DVR and again "error", got really tired of hearing "error" from controller and so did people listening. E-mailed Greg at Pacific Research Solutions and then on own we decided to try an older file and the DVR was back, we spent the next 2 hours bringing the other stuff back up to date.
05-04-00 – On Friday 04-21-00 the controller said goodbye to us and then stopped transmitting, it was Sunday before I got a chance to look at it, it appeared that the controller was stuck in the power on self test, I called support (which is Greg at Pacific Research Solutions and he is also the sales person and everything else) and he said the watch dog circuit was failing and to send it back, shipped the controller next day on Tuesday to him and he fixed it under warrantee on Wednesday and sent it back to us. We received it Thursday and had installed it back in the repeater on Friday. All is well… Also I tested the new Dell computer as described above to see how it worked sending new programming to the controller and it worked great.
03-14-00 - We have discovered why the latest version and previous versions of the programming software would stop sending to the controller right in the middle of the transmission. It turns out that if the computer that is used is not fast enough the controller times out. We started bringing the repeater and controller back to the shop and using a 400Mhz computer and had no problems. I have a 500Mhz Dell Notebook ordered and this should allow programming back at the repeater site. We have ordered the remote base from Pacific Research Solutions and will setup and install it when it arrives, this will allow our 70cm repeater to link to the surrounding 2-meter repeaters.