Summary:
Technical team members went to the VE7EGO site to do the following:
- general pre-winter checks
- re-installation of PiEGO
Attendees:
VA7RLX Ritchie
VE7TRZ Terry
VE7KPZ Mike
Access:
The usual route was taken to access the VE7EGO Commonage site. All members travelled up and down from the site in their own respective vehicles.
Just before heading in to the VE7EGO site, Mike phoned Kevin at 250-744-0732. Kevin is in charge of exploding/disposing of WW2 munitions still in the hillsides. Upon departure from the site, Mike texted Kevin to notify him of our departure. Kevin likes to know both the ins and outs of our visits.
Actions Taken:
Terry opened up the VE7EGO shack and went straight to work on the re-installation of PiEGO. In addition to the installation of PiEGO for repeater AC power control and shack monitoring, Terry installed a small UPS for PiEGO and the repeaters in order to mitigate any potential AC power fluctuations affecting the equipment.
Mike disabled both repeaters after advertising the scheduled maintenance on air.
Ritchie and Mike performed a scan of the VHF antenna and then the RX and TX sides of the duplexer with Mike's RigExpert AA-230 Zoom analyzer. It was again noticed that the RX side of the duplexer appeared to be slightly off. This continues to explain why this repeater is a little bit deaf to weak signals - desense due to a little bit more TX coming into the RX than expected. The antenna, however, scanned low SWR across the entire HAM VHF band frequency range (<1.16:1).
Ritchie and Mike then did an additional check of the VHF TX with Mike's Surecom SW-102 bridge. SWR on the TX side is low (1.18:1) with TX power at medium.
Lastly, Ritchie and Mike checked the UHF TX with Mike's Surecom SW-102 bridge. SWR on the TX side also low (1.07:1) with TX power at medium.
Mike re-activated the repeaters and proceeded to test them both in analog and digital. Big thanks to VE6LIT for the signal check via the WIRES-X Canada Room.
While in the shack, Mike noticed that the wired internet connection was again working. We do still plan to move the shack over to HAMwan for internet, but this is great to see for the meantime.
A visual inspection of the shack roof, tower, antennas and feed lines showed nothing abnormal. Ritchie paid special attention to confirming that Mike's roof repair from last year was holding.
After leaving the site, Terry worked with Dave at iSpeed to sort out inbound firewall rules for the internet connection so that we again have remote SSH access to PiEGO. A very big thanks to iSpeed and Omega Communications for their continued support in facilitating internet service to our VE7EGO amateur radio repeater site.
Next Steps:
If the weather holds over the next couple of weeks, Mike will bring the duplexer for the VHF repeater down to Ralph VA7NU's for a re-tune and then re-install it at the site.
FYI,
Mike VE7KPZ
NORAC Vice-President and Technical Committee Lead