May 21, 2019
It is with a heavy hearts a crew of 4 NORAC members visited the Commonage East repeater site location to decommission VE7RIP, our previous primary low-level VHF repeater for Vernon.
Terry VE7TRZ, Nic VA7AZZ, Mike VE7MHE and Mike VE7KPZ met with a BC Hydro representative today and cleared out the shack.
The tower was very "sketchy" so safety dictated that it would not be climbed today. The Sinclair 210C4 VHF antenna and a small UHF Yagi antenna will remain at the site until BC Hydro brings up a bucket truck. They'll let us know when that will be and we can go claim our antennae at that future date.
There was one consolation prize: a large lead-acid battery (in good health) remained at the site and was donated to the club. Our plan is to bring this battery up to the Commonage West repeater site and use it to provide battery backup for the VE7EGO repeaters.
The crew was then joined by Ted VE7UIH and the VE7RIP repeater was taken to the club's storage trailer.
The VE7RIP duplexer, a 6-cavity Sinclair Res-Lok Q2330E, was taken by Mike VE7KPZ to be re-tuned to VE7RSS' frequencies. This will be an ever better swap in for VE7RSS as it currently uses the same model duplexer. Additionally, the connections on this duplexer are all N-type so no new cables will need to be made for the upcoming VE7RSS duplexer swap.
This is a bit of an end of an era for VE7RIP... but it doesn't have to be. If any club member would like to host this repeater at their QTH, please let This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. know as it would be great to see it back in service. There's nothing wrong with this repeater. It was decommissioned purely because our shack host, BC Hydro, was pulling out of the site.
FYI and 73,
Mike VE7KPZ
NORAC Vice-President 2017-2019 and Technical Committee Member
Photo credit: Mike VE7MHE