W8ECG Repeater in Fostoria. MI 443.450
What's been happening by date: 2004 entries
12-06-2004 - Jimbo (N8YJN), AJ (Gold Member), and me (KG8ID) cruised down to the L'anse Creuse Swap on Sunday, had a great time and picked up the 5 dollar deal of the day.
11-13-2004 - Pre-amp back in line. Life goes on...
11-01-2004 - Pre-amp and power amp are offline and one user still gets chopped audio, I will look at this users mobile radio for problems, no one else is experiencing this issue any more.
10-20-2004 - The more RF the receiver receives the more the audio clips, I thought it might be the amp getting into the receiver, (amp was operating on low DC voltage for a while). The amp is disconnected and the backup repeater is in place. Audio still chops. I will pull the pre-amp for a while and see if that is the cause.
Played with telephone portion of the controller, connect the reverse auto-patch, fun stuff.
09-03-2004 - Repeater output had been going up and down for some time, I checked the deep cycle battery that the amp was running on and it was dry (no water in battery). I connected the amp directly to the power supply and life is good once again, the major problem is no back up during a power failure. Do we care? Thanks to Mike KB8OOE for brainstorming the issue with me.
We (as in just me, Joe and Jim) are attempting to place a repeater on our awesome site and re-establishing the link to Warren, MI. We hope to have the Bad Axe link back all the way to Detroit. More as it occurs.
Ponder on some topo's from the most jamming site in the thumb... Imlay City, North Branch, Lapeer, Tawas, Flint, Saginaw, Caro and Bad Axe. Keep your HT batteries charged it's coming to a town near you...
08-12-2004 - Not a dang thing...(Amateur Radio that is...)
06-22-2004 - Not much time for Amateur Radio this year, it has taken a back seat to life, I still monitor but I don't answer all calls like I used to, I appreciate those of you that are faithful in helping me monitor the repeater and I know if someone has an emergency that we will try and handle it, isn't that what it is supposed to be anyways?
05-25-2004 - We are planning to leave the PL tone of 100 Hz on, maybe indefinitely, we like the quiet, Joe and I did some controller programming to make the repeater tell the user if they access the repeater with the wrong tone or no tone, SET (simulated emergency test) coming up on June 5, we will probably stand around over there for a while and watch the paid staff play.
04-28-2004 - Time to re-think the noise and or interference, maybe it's not a baby monitor, it plays music a lot. The 100 Hz tone is on for a while, that makes the noise go bye bye.
04-20-2004 - Have you heard the interference/noise on the repeater, if you listen closely you can hear all kinds of activity in the audio, I believe it's a baby monitor, the harmonics of a baby monitor on 49.880 is real close the repeaters input.
I have been asked by 8 people now about Amateur Radio classes for the Technician license, the biggest problem is a day and time that meets everyone's schedule, Tuscola is also starting classes soon and we may work together. If you are interested send an email.
01-29-2004 - Kenwood repeater is sold, I hated to see it go but I also hated to see it sit un-used, WIRES internet link is down due to Norton Anti-Virus scan taking all the computers resources, all is needed is a re-boot but the snow keeps me from getting up to the site.
01-19-2004 - Happy New Year. I know it's late but there has been nothing to report, all system are working properly, 3 of us traveled on the snowy Saturday to the ARAY swap in Flushing, Joe(KC8CEF) the driver, Dale(KC8RVO) the Pastor, and Perry(KG8ID) the rider, Dale told me I forgot to add our visit to the L'anse Creuse swap so I thought I'd make sure to keep updating here technical or otherwise. Thanks Pastor Dale for setting me straight. The ARAY swap looked like a good turn out for the weather conditions, I saw lots of people I had not seen in a while, we did miss Fred(N8ABR), we walked around quite a while and picked up some needed connectors and fuses. It's nice to get together in a heated building and do the ham radio thing.