10 Oct 2016 RSS Silver Star Visit
Attendees:
David VA7SKN
Terry VE7TRZ
12:00 Left Roko
12:45 Arrived RSS
14:35 Departed RSS
15:10 Arrived Roko
Details:
- Was still able to get all the way up to the shack using the short route Jesse used ... going up was fine but as the day warmed up, the road turned from solid dirt to slippery muck so had to do a bit of controlled sliding down parts of the hill ... that wasn't expected but good to know going forward ... I had been expecting to have to deal with icy patches but there were none to be found ... the snow on parts of the road wasn't an issue.
- relay panel was installed
- 100W PA TLD1692B was installed
- TLD1692D was brought back to Vernon (I currently have 2 of these which I will take back to the trailer when I have moment) Jesse has the original TLD1692C and the other TLD1692D
- limited testing was done on site with the 100W PA ... without an RF power meter I can't say what the current/installed final power is for this PA, it was tested to 80W at Gary VE7EIY's shack and left in that configuration ... reports from other HAMS off site were favourable for both PA's (I personally ordered an RF Power Meter/Counter which hopefully will fill in this gap)
- Tested the auto drop out function for the 100W PA due to Hydro/Mains failure ... this automatically connects the repeater and Antenna to the 30W PA plus the DC power to the 100W PA drops out completely (zero current draw)
Issues:
1) wasn't able to connect my laptop to the RCL4 via the serial port (I wrote a capture program which I wanted to use to extract the entire 151 to 249 user defined settings; 011 XXX and 054 XXX where XXX was 151 to 249 ... without a connection, I was unable to run this capture program)... the RCL4 wouldn't respond to any of the following manually entered commands; 009, 011 151, or 054 151 ... all were expected to return some detail, the RLC4 provided absolutely no output. Had set my Laptop comport to 9600 8N1 ... tried both DTE and DCE connections ... without being able to pole the RCL4 via the serial port, I was unable to extract the latest macro updates made by Jesse on our last trip.
2) found an old file with a list of control codes ... tried some of the commands using DTMF via 444.275 but ran in to an issue with turning on the 100W PA using AA1 094 1 ... while this command successfully turned on the 100W PA it also connected all the ports together (RSS was Transmitting on RVN)
3) for some reason I was also having an issue trying to control the RCL4 via RSS (146.88) ... discussions with Jesse during our last trip led me to believe that the RCL4 should respond to DTMF commands on any port ... not sure if this is an issue or a result of some of the commands I tried; 880, 881, or 202 ... as I was expecting Jesse to send me his latest Macro file, I didn't copy down any of the changes he made ... one of the changes he made, I thought, was prefixed with 88 so was expecting 880 to turn on or off the Hi PA and 881 to be the opposite of 880
As a result of the command AA1 094 1, connecting 88 to the world, I left the site with the 30W PA active (AA1 093 1) ... when we can determine the correct commands required to activate the 100W PA, we can turn this PA back on ... right now it can only be considered a backup PA
The control chips have been shipped ... once they arrive we will determine our next step for RSS
TRZ
Attendees:
David VA7SKN
Terry VE7TRZ
12:00 Left Roko
12:45 Arrived RSS
14:35 Departed RSS
15:10 Arrived Roko
Details:
- Was still able to get all the way up to the shack using the short route Jesse used ... going up was fine but as the day warmed up, the road turned from solid dirt to slippery muck so had to do a bit of controlled sliding down parts of the hill ... that wasn't expected but good to know going forward ... I had been expecting to have to deal with icy patches but there were none to be found ... the snow on parts of the road wasn't an issue.
- relay panel was installed
- 100W PA TLD1692B was installed
- TLD1692D was brought back to Vernon (I currently have 2 of these which I will take back to the trailer when I have moment) Jesse has the original TLD1692C and the other TLD1692D
- limited testing was done on site with the 100W PA ... without an RF power meter I can't say what the current/installed final power is for this PA, it was tested to 80W at Gary VE7EIY's shack and left in that configuration ... reports from other HAMS off site were favourable for both PA's (I personally ordered an RF Power Meter/Counter which hopefully will fill in this gap)
- Tested the auto drop out function for the 100W PA due to Hydro/Mains failure ... this automatically connects the repeater and Antenna to the 30W PA plus the DC power to the 100W PA drops out completely (zero current draw)
Issues:
1) wasn't able to connect my laptop to the RCL4 via the serial port (I wrote a capture program which I wanted to use to extract the entire 151 to 249 user defined settings; 011 XXX and 054 XXX where XXX was 151 to 249 ... without a connection, I was unable to run this capture program)... the RCL4 wouldn't respond to any of the following manually entered commands; 009, 011 151, or 054 151 ... all were expected to return some detail, the RLC4 provided absolutely no output. Had set my Laptop comport to 9600 8N1 ... tried both DTE and DCE connections ... without being able to pole the RCL4 via the serial port, I was unable to extract the latest macro updates made by Jesse on our last trip.
2) found an old file with a list of control codes ... tried some of the commands using DTMF via 444.275 but ran in to an issue with turning on the 100W PA using AA1 094 1 ... while this command successfully turned on the 100W PA it also connected all the ports together (RSS was Transmitting on RVN)
3) for some reason I was also having an issue trying to control the RCL4 via RSS (146.88) ... discussions with Jesse during our last trip led me to believe that the RCL4 should respond to DTMF commands on any port ... not sure if this is an issue or a result of some of the commands I tried; 880, 881, or 202 ... as I was expecting Jesse to send me his latest Macro file, I didn't copy down any of the changes he made ... one of the changes he made, I thought, was prefixed with 88 so was expecting 880 to turn on or off the Hi PA and 881 to be the opposite of 880
As a result of the command AA1 094 1, connecting 88 to the world, I left the site with the 30W PA active (AA1 093 1) ... when we can determine the correct commands required to activate the 100W PA, we can turn this PA back on ... right now it can only be considered a backup PA
The control chips have been shipped ... once they arrive we will determine our next step for RSS
TRZ