First we moved the solar panel array out to the driveway, facing south,
and wire up the batteries.
Next we installed a 2 Meter/70 cm antenna.
Finally we moved the repeater from Bob Grigg's house and installed it in Grady's garage.
Standing by the open door of the equipment hut are Jim Tully N7ENB, leaning
on the door, and George Johnson.
Inside the hut, Foster Paulis W4HCX measures for a shelf to hold our equipment.
Unfortunately, nobody brought along a camera. Yeah, I was supposed to bring my camera, but somehow I left it behind. At a future day, someone will go up there again and phograph what we did.
Jerry brought along a repeater test set. The repeater's output was noise-free when fed with a weak clean signal via cable from the test set. When Jerry transmitted a weak over-the-air signal from the test set, there was noise on the repeater output. We substituted another antenna (on Grady's automobile) and cable, connected to the same point at the repeater input as the test set had been; again we got noise. This showed that the noise source was local, probably somewhere on the hill-top. We were not able to establish where the noise was coming from. We will have to return with directional antennas to locate the source of the interference.
While on-site, Grady took some photos. This is the repeater hut.
Our solar panels are in front of the hut.
The Sheriff's Department's solar panels are on the top
of the hut. At the extreme left is the pole holding
his and our antennas (see below for a better photo of the antennas).
The antenna for the amateur repeater is on the left side of this wooden pole. The antenna for the Sheriff's Department repeater is above us and on the right side of the pole; in this photo, only the base of the Sheriff's repeater can be seen; the radiating elements are higher. |
This is where the various cables enter the repeater hut.
The grey corrugated cable is our antenna cable.
The black smooth cable is our solar-panel power.
The black corrugated cable is the Sheriff's antenna.
The light-brown cable is the Sheriff's solar-panel power.
This photo shows part of the road we take to get to the repeater location.
At left center is the final section of road, across the ridge-top.
In right center, the arrow points to the road down in the valley.
This is one of several mines in the area.