147.135-/146.865

 W9SM (Wausau, WI) 2 meter repeater system

The 147.135 W9SM repeater is a high profile remote receive/transmit system serving Marathon County, City of Wausau, and the surrounding counties in North Central Wisconsin. The repeater is sponsored by the Wisconsin Valley Radio Association and is an open repeater system. All amateur radio operators are encouraged to use the system. 

147.135/146.865 repeater system – satellite receivers/multicast transmitters

PL 114.8 (2A)

Transmit on 147.135 from Hewitt / 146.865 from Mosinee Hill

Receive on 147.735 at Hewitt, Mosinee Hill, Brokaw, Aspirus Wausau Hospital, Bevent, Hatley, Dancy, Abbotsford, Spencer

Receive on 146.265 at Hewitt

The best way to use the system is to always transmit on 147.735 (PL 114.8) and then listen to either 147.135 (PL 114.8) or 146.865 (PL 114.8), which ever works best for you depending on your location. 

The WVRA sponsors a formal swap net on this repeater system on Wednesday evenings at 9pm.  Please check out the net info page for more information on this net.

147.137 Mhz repeater PL 114.8 (2A)

The WVRA 147.135 repeater is located on the FOX 55 tower located in the town of Hewitt, northeast of Wausau.  This site is comprised of 2 Motorola Radius GM300 mobile radios.  The receive radio is connected to a TX/RX preamp and then goes to the output of a bandpass cavity.  The input of the bandpass cavity is connected to the receive port on the Wacom WP-641 duplexer.  The transmit radio has the power turned down to approx 1 watt from the normal level of 25 watts.  It then runs through a transmitter 50 ohm attenuator network.  This network drops the power down to approx 250 milliwatts.  The output of the network feeds the input of a GE Mastr II 100 watt continuous duty PA.  The output of the PA is run through a TX/RX isolator/ circulator and a 2nd harmonic filter.  The output of the isolator is fed to the transmitter input of the Wacom WP-641 duplexer.  The antenna port of the duplexer then goes to the 2M side of a Telewave 2M/ 70cm Telewave cross band coupler.  The 70cm side of the coupler is connected to the 444.100 repeater.  The coupler connects both repeaters to the same 1 1/4″ hardline that runs up the tower to a height of approx 780 feet.  The feedline then connects to another Telewave cross band coupler to separate the signals so that they can go to their respective antennas.  The 2M output of the cross band coupler is connected to a 1/2″ hardline jumper and then is run to a Telewave antenna.  This antenna is mounted on the antenna mount standing up from the mount.  The 70cm antenna is mounted on the same mount but is hanging down.  This repeater is controlled by a SCOM 7K repeater controller and Motorola Spectra-TAC voter.  This controller is also shared with the 224.640 repeater.  There is also auto patch on this repeater.  During the hang time of the repeater, the PL tone is stripped off.  This means that if you have receive PL enabled on your radio, you will not hear the courtesy tone or any of the controller generated announcements.

This repeater is a voted system.  We currently have satellite receive sites at Mosinee Hill, Bevent, Brokaw, Dancy, Wausau, Abbotsford, Spencer and the local receiver at the FOX 55 tower.  The satellite receivers are linked back to the main site at FOX 55 using Motorola Maxtrac 100 transmit radios that have GE MDX radios connected to them receiving on 147.735.  The link receivers at the FOX 55 site are Motorola Radius M120 radios.  The audio output of these radios are fed through an interface which switches the audio input of the Motorola Spectra-TAC voter from the receiver audio or a 2175 Hz tone.  The 2175 Hz tone is used to squelch the signal quality cards (receiver input cards) on the voter.

The output of the voter is sent to a S-Com 7K controller and then to the Motorola GM300 transmit radio on 147.135.  The output of the voter also goes to a UHF Motorola Maxtrac 100 transmitter which transmits the signal to Mosinee Hill to be rebroadcast on the 146.865 transmitter.

 

146.865 Mhz repeater PL 114.8 (2A) 

This system is a split site repeater that is also linked full time to the 147.135 repeater.  The transmit half of the system (146.865 PL 114.8 2A) is located at Mosinee Hill near Wausau and Rib Mountain.  The transmitter is a M216 Motorola Radius 45 watt mobile radio with the power turned down to approximately 1 watt.  This runs through an attenuator network and is input to a GE Mastr II 100 watt continuous duty power amp..  It then goes through a TX/RX circulator and second harmonic filter and then through 2 TX/RX bandpass cavities to the 7/8″ hardline.  At this point, we have about 60 watts.  The hardline runs up the tower to a level of 90ft.  The total run of hardline is approx 140ft.  the hardline is connected to a Celwave PD340 6db gain antenna.  This transmitter is connected to a UHF Motorola Radius M10 mobile radio.  This link radio listens for the link that is being transmitted from the FOX55 tower in the town of Hewitt, northeast of Wausau.

The 146.265 (PL 114.8) receiver is located at the Fox 55 tower located northeast of Wausau in the town of Hewitt.  The receiver is a Motorola Radius M208.  The radio is run  through a Micor 2M receive preamp and then goes into a Wacom duplexer.  The other side of the duplexer goes to the 145.610 Winlink digipeater radio.  The output of the duplexer is fed into the VHF port of a PCTEL/Maxrad VHF/UHF diplexer.  The output of the diplexer is connected to 7/8″ hardline that is then run up the tower to a level of 375ft.  The total run of hardline is approx 575ft.  The antenna is a Diamond X500HNA on a Pyrod 6ft side arm bracket.

The 146.265 receive radio is hooked into a signal quality (SQM) card in a Motorola Spectra TAC voter along with the satellite receivers on 147.735.  The output of the voter is sent to a S-Com 7K controller which goes to the 147.135 transmitter.  The output of the voter also goes to a Motorola Maxtrac M100 transmitter which transmits the signal to Mosinee Hill to be rebroadcast on the 146.865 transmitter.

Repeater System technical log

last update 09/17/2009

147.135 System Goes Voting Receive and Multicast Transmit

On January 20th, a voter was added to the 147.135 system.  Currently we are voting receivers at the Fox 55 tower in Hewitt and a receiver on Mosinee Hill.  The voter will decide which signal has better quality and put that signal out over the 147.135 transmitter at the Fox 55 tower and also a transmitter on 146.865 (PL 114.8) on Mosinee Hill.  The additional transmitter and satellite receiver at Mosinee Hill will greatly help the coverage in the Wausau area.  In the near future, we will also be adding satellite receivers for the voting system in the towns of Bevent, Dancy, and Brokaw.  We will also be adding a receiver at the Wausau Hospital location when we change to the new 6M radios on the 6M repeater.  With the new voter there will be some time needed to work through a couple of little problems.  Please be patient while we work through these.  You will also notice a small difference in audio quality between the 147.135 and 146.865 transmitters.  This is due to different audio routing paths to the different transmitters.  With the new system, there are a couple of things that will work different.  We will no longer have the link between the 147.135 and 224.640 repeater systems.  Also, if you use auto patch, you need to always listen to the 147.135 transmitter.  The phone line audio is not played back to the 146.865 transmitter at Mosinee Hill.

In the event that you were to transmit on 146.265 (146.865 -600khz), we have placed a receiver for that frequency out at the Fox 55 tower and have that tied into the rest of the 147.135/ 146.865 system.  The antenna for this receiver is lower on the tower, so the range will be less than the 147.735 receiver.  The PL for this is also 114.8.

If you have any questions about this, please contact either Mark, N9MEA or Matt, N9NMH.  For more information on voting systems, check out our voting comparators page.

1/24/07 –  Added satellite receiver and link transmitter at Brokaw.  Currently we are voting Brokaw, Mosinee Hill, and Hewitt (Fox 55 tower).  The equipment at Dancy should be on the air by the weekend.

1/27/06 –  Added satellite receiver and link transmitter at Dancy.  This brings us up to 4 receiver sites.  The receiver at Bevent should be going up in the next week or two.  There is also a hum on the Brokaw site that I should be taking a look at 1/27 or 28.  A lot of the hum is filtered out by the link receiver and the voter, but if you listen close, you can hear when someone votes Brokaw.  I will also be looking at the voter issue that is causing the beeping while we talk on the system.

1/29/07 –  Repaired hum on Brokaw this weekend but didn’t have time to go to FOX 55 tower to look into the voter problem.  I hope to look at that before the end of the week.  Hopefully, Bevent should be on the air before the weekend.

1/31/07 – Went to the Hewitt (Fox55) tower to try to get rid of the beeping coming from the voter.  I changed a couple of things to see how they work.  Also noticed hum coming from the Dancy site.  No hum from the Brokaw site, though.  Doesn’t look like Bevent will get on this week, maybe next week.  If you know of anyone that has a 19″ rack shelf that they would like to donate to the club, have them contact Mark, N9MEA.

2/3/07 – Remounted the radios at Dancy to repair the hum on the 2M receiver at that site.

2/10/07 – Installed the satellite receiver and link transmitter at the Bevent site.  This site is on the air.  There is some decense from another transmitter in the building.  Need to add a pass/reject cavity in the receive line to try to rectify the problem.  This brings us up to 5 receive sites, Hewitt, Mosinee Hill, Brokaw, Dancy and now Bevent.

2/13/07 – Installed bandpass/bandreject cavity on satellite receiver to get rid of decense from the other transmitter.  There is still about 3db of decense.  Mobiles from Wausau can hit this receiver.

3/9/07 – Added battery backup power to the Dancy receiver and link radio.  We now have backup power at Dancy, Bevent, and Mosinee Hill.  We hope to be adding it soon to the Hewitt (Fox55) site.

6/2/07 – Heard the 146.865 and 147.135 transmitters cutting out.  Problem is in the voter and turned up after adjustments were made to the voter last weekend.

6/23/07 – Got out to the Fox 55 tower and repaired the problem of the transmitters cutting out.  The problem was in the voter.

7/3/07 – Interesting problem today, both the 147.135 and 146.865 transmitters were off the air.  I noticed the problem shortly before 5pm.  I went out to the Hewitt tower and found both the Astron SL11 power supplies that power the link receivers were only putting out about 4 volts.  I turned off one radio attached to each supply and the voltage came up to 13 volts.  I turned the radios back on and the voltage stayed at 13.  After some further trouble shooting, I found out that we had a short power outage at the site and when the power came back on, the power supplies go into shut down.  This only happens when the AC power is lost or the power is turned off and then returned while all the link receive radios are powered up.  In this state, this also caused the voter interface to not work.  I powered down all unnecessary radios and will bring out a different power supply to power all the link receivers.  Thanks to everyone that called to inform me of the problem.

7/7/07 – Installed a replacement power supply for the link receive radios.  Wired the voter interface to a separate Astron SL11 power supply.

7/19/07 – Removed the Dancy satellite receiver for a preventative maintenance check.  Hope to get it back up on Monday 7/23/07.

7/23/07 – Reinstalled Dancy satellite receiver.

8/21/07 – Got the Abbotsford satellite receive site up and running.  There are still a couple of problems at the site.  It appears that the duplexer on the tower is bad.  Len N9QIP will replace that at a later date.  There is also a problem with the battery backup power supply.  That should hopefully be fixed in the next couple of weeks.

8/29/07 – Installed bandpass cavity and preamp on satellite receiver at Dancy.  This was done to get rid of decense caused by a data system at the same site.

9/1/07 – Repaired the battery backup power supply at Abbotsford.  This site now has backup power.  All the sites except for Brokaw and Hewitt (Fox55) have some form of backup power whether it be generator or battery backup.

9/5/07 – Removed the link transmitter from Bevent to modify it.

9/6/07 – Reinstalled the link transmitter at Bevent.  Also removed and then reinstalled the link transmitter at Mosinee Hill.  With these done, this leaves Brokaw as the only transmitter that needs to be modified.  I went to Brokaw to pick up the link radio, but there was a LARGE wasp nest hanging from the ceiling just inside the door.  I decided to wait to do this one until after it gets cold outside.

10/12/07 – Today we did tower work at the Hatley site and installed the RF equipment.  However, we don’t yet have a link frequency coordinated for this site so it is not yet on the air.  We also got some antenna work done out at the Fox55 tower.  We installed a UHF corner reflector for the link to Mosinee Hill to free up the Diamond dual band antenna which is going to be used for the new UHF repeater on 444.425.

10/15/07 – Lots of stuff going on today.  First, we got the Wausau Hospital satellite receive site up and running.  Had a complaint that the 147.135 and 146.865 transmitters were kerchunking since sometime Sunday.  It was acting up during my drive out to the Fox55 tower, but it cleared up just as I was pulling into the parking lot.  I watched things for a couple of hours while other work was being done and it never acted up again.  Also checked the power out of the system just to make sure something didn’t get cooked while it was transmitting and everything looks good.  About 78watts out to the hardline.

10/31/07 – The 147.135 along with the 444.100 went dead during the Halloween Watch.  Went to the site at 11pm and found the UPS was in alarm due to over current.  Moved the power supply for the 444.100 power amp to a non-backed up outlet for now until we can get another UPS.

11/13/07 – The transmitters on 146.865 and 147.135 were kerchunking again.  It was still acting up when I got out to the Fox55 tower and found that the status tone detector on the Signal Quality Module (SQM) for Bevent was out of tune.  I retuned the detector circuit and all is working fine now.

11/15/07 – The wasps were finally gone from inside the building at Brokaw, so I removed the link transmitter so that it could have the transmit modification done.

11/16/07 – Reinstalled the link transmitter at Brokaw.

12/7/07 – Got the Hatley satellite receive site up and running with the voter.  This site is now operational.  This brings us up to a total of 8 receive sites – HewittHatleyBeventDancyAbbotsfordBrokawWausau Hospital, andMosinee Hill.  Also got all equipment at the Hewitt site on UPS power now.  Thanks to Mike KB9DED, Matt N9NMH, Mark N9MEA, and Len N9QIP for locating and donating the UPSs and all the necessary equipment to get everything working on the UPSs.

1/25/08 – Lost power to most of Rib Mountain including the tower on Mosinee Hill that has a satellite receiver located at.  The generator ran perfect and we had no loss of service on this 147.735 satellite receiver and link or the 146.865 transmitter.

4/18/08 – Tested back-up power battery at Dancy – tested good.  Still had 12.7 volts after running the receiver/ link transmitter/ and receiver preamp after 45 minutes.

4/26/08 – If you’ve been listening over the last couple of days, you would have heard that there were times that the transmit audio was OK and times when it was very low.  I tracked it down to the Abbotsford site and UHF link receive radio at Hewitt.  There were actually 2 problems.  The link receiver has low receive audio out to the voter and the satellite site at the Abbotsford tower has low audio coming to Hewitt.  It is unknown as to whether the problem at Abbotsford is the link transmitter or the 2M receiver.  For now, the Abbotsford site has been removed from the voter and the link receive radio has been removed for repair.  I hope to get to the Abbotsford tower in the next couple of weeks.

5/25/08 – The 147.135, 444.100 and UHF link to Mosinee Hill went off the air during a SKYWARN event today.  When I got out the tower, the UPS was in shutdown.  I found that having the the 147.135, 444.100, and UHF link on the air for an extended time caused the UPS to go into shut down.  All these systems are on the same UPS.  I swapped a couple of things around on the UPSs to try to eliminate the problem.

6/4/08 – Checked the Abbotsford satellite receiver and UHF link transmitter and reset the levels.  I also ran the site on the battery backup for 15 minutes to exercise the battery.  The battery tested fine.

6/27/08 – Reinstalled the repaired link receive radio at Hewitt for the Abbotsford satellite receiver and set the levels.  Also ran everything on the UPS systems for 30 minutes.

1/11/09 – Got a message that the transmitter on the 147.135 isn’t working but the 146.865 is working fine.

1/12/09 – Ran some tests and have the 147.135 full scale at home on the D700 mobile and can also hear it at work on an HT.  Matt N9NMH said that he doesn’t have any signal where he normally does.  Went to the site at 7pm and found that the PA only had .35 watts out.  Swapped in one of the spare PAs to find that that PA is also bad.  Installed the second spare PA and that one works great.  Set it to 100 watts out of the PA.

1/20/09 – Tested battery back-up at Dancy.  Tested good but need to add water to cells.  After 25 minutes, battery still had 12.4 volts.

2/9/09 – Filled water in battery at Dancy.

7/22/09 – Checked the battery back up and filled the battery at Abbotsford.

7/27/09 – Got the Spencer site up and running.  We continue doing testing on this site.

8/8/09 – Heard some fan noise and a hum on the transmit of the .135 and .865.  Found that the fan noise is coming from the Spencer site so I disabled that site on the voter.  The hum is coming from a bad power supply in one of the voter shelves.  I have a spare at home and will return a different day to swap it out.

8/12/09 – Swapped out the power supply on the voter shelf and the hum is gone.  Enabled the Spencer site but the fan noise is still there.  Tested the UPSs and found that the small UPS that provides back up power for the 444.100 PA is bad.  The batteries are OK and it charges the batteries OK but it won’t switch to battery power when AC power is lost.  Gave it a good look and didn’t see anything obvious.  We don’t have any manual for this unit.  For now, if we loose power, the 444.100 repeater will be down.


8/27/09 – Got the hum problem taken care from Spencer.  It was caused by an impedance mismatch in the audio circuits.


9/14/09 – Got an email from Matt N9NMH letting me know that the autopatch wasn’t working.


9/17/09 – Ran out to FOX55 tower today and found that the phone line was bad at the demark box.  Verizon will be called so they can send someone out to fix it.

 

 

 

2/20/07 – Noticed that when the 146.865 transmitter gets hot, it intermittently will not transmit.  It seems that if you leave the system unkeyed for about 10 seconds, the transmit will come back.  I have only heard this problem once, but Jerry mentioned that he thought it happened once before during the reports on the Wednesday evening net.

4/15/07 – Today, the 146.865 transmitter was upgraded to a 100 watt transmitter.  There was also a circulator added to the antenna system along with the 2 TX/RX bandpass cavities.  After the circulator and 2 cavities, there is 60 watts out to the antenna.  It was noticed before the work began that the transmitter was down to 17 watts out to the antenna.  This may explain why some people mentioned that sometimes it seemed that the transmitter dropped off of the air and others said it went noisy.  With the upgrade to 100 watts, the power out of the transmitter was turned down to approx 8 watts and this will hopefully remedy the problem of the transmitter dropping in power.  If it doesn’t, we will need to replace the driver PA.  The PA added to the system is a VHF GE MastrII 100 watt continuous duty PA.  This PA feeds into the TX/RX circulator and then into the 2 TX/RX bandpass cavities.  The new PA is feed from the Motorola Radius M216 transceiver that is turned down to approximately to 8 watts and is fed into a 50 ohm transmit pad network.  The output of the network is fed into the input of the GE MastrII PA.

4/18/07 – The problem with the 146.865 transmitter is still there.  Isn’t it great that nothing acts up when you are at the site to work on it.  I will try to get back up to the site Friday or Saturday to swap out the intermediate PA and see if that cures the problem.

4/19/07 – Swapped out the intermediate PA today and retuned the transmitter.  However, later today I noticed that it is still dropping out.

4/20/07 – Had a chance to look at the 146.865 transmitter while it was acting up this afternoon when Matt N9NMH and Mike KB9DED were using the system.  Looks like the link receiver from Hewitt (FOX55) is OK.  It appears that the problem is somewhere in the 146.865 transmit radio.  I should hopefully be able to swap out the radio sometime this weekend (4/21-22) between my work schedule.

4/22/07 – Had a chance to spend more time trouble shooting the intermittent transmit problem today and found that the 50 ohm attenuator pad has an intermittent problem.  I removed it and jumpered around the the 100 watt PA, so we are running on low power until I can fix the network.  That should hopefully be early in the week.  I hope to have it completed so that we can use it for the MS walk on the weekend of 4/28-29/07.

4/23/07 – Reinstalled the repaired attenuator network and tested.  Appears that everything is up and running again.  Turned the power out of the transceiver down to 5 watts to go into the attenuator network to give about 230mW into the PA.

4/28/07 – Heard through the grapevine that there was a problem again with the 146.865 transmitter during the Wednesday night swap net.  I removed one of the attenuators in the network and turned the transmit power on the transceiver down to approx 1 watt.  I am hoping that the problem is a heating issue within the attenuator network.

5/4/07 – Heard from Dennis W9PBB that the 865 transmitter cut out during the CW net on Wednesday night.  Swapped out the attenuator network with a different one.  This one is only rated for 1/2 watt, but hopefully it will stand up alright with the fan blowing on it.  If this one fails, we’ll have to look into getting a higher power one.

5/16/07 – Heard the 146.865 transmitter failed during the nets tonight.  I will order a replacement attenuator for it this time.

6/2/07 – Heard the 146.865 and 147.135 transmitters cutting out.  Problem is in the voter and turned up after adjustments were made to the voter last weekend.

6/23/07 – Got out to the Fox 55 tower and repaired the problem of the transmitters cutting out.  The problem was in the voter.

6/24/07 – Got up to Mosinee Hill to replace the bad attenuator.  I also installed a bank of fans in the cabinet to help with cooling.  The building on Mosinee Hill is not heated or air conditioned.

7/3/07 – Interesting problem today, both the 147.135 and 146.865 transmitters were off the air.  I noticed the problem shortly before 5pm.  I went out to the Hewitt tower and found both the Astron SL11 power supplies that power the link receivers were only putting out about 4 volts.  I turned off one radio attached to each supply and the voltage came up to 13 volts.  I turned the radios back on and the voltage stayed at 13.  After some further trouble shooting, I found out that we had a short power outage at the site and when the power came back on, the power supplies go into shut down.  This only happens when the AC power is lost or the power is turned off and then returned while all the link receive radios are powered up.  In this state, this also caused the voter interface to not work.  I powered down all unnecessary radios and will bring out a different power supply to power all the link receivers.  Thanks to everyone that called to inform me of the problem.

7/7/07 – Installed a replacement power supply for the link receive radios.  Wired the voter interface to a separate Astron SL11 power supply.

7/8/07 – 146.865 transmitter was cutting out during the weather net today.  Went to the site while it was acting up and found that the temperature in the building was 105F and it was warmer in the cabinet.  The transmit radio was going in to shutdown due to the heat.  I removed the radio so that it can be checked over.  I also had to fix the exhaust fan in the building.

7/11/07 – I was able to make the modification to the radio over the last couple of days and re-installed the transmitter.  I tested the radio on the bench by keying the radio up for 10 minutes while having a heat gun blowing on the PA.  After letting it cool down, I also keyed the radio up for 25 minutes.  The output power stayed very stable near 1 watt.  Remember that this radio drives the 100 watt PA.

7/18/07 – During the net, I heard the UHF link to Mosinee Hill from the Hewitt tower drop off the air a couple of times.  This sounds similar to the problem we were experiencing with the the 146.865 transmitter dropping off of the air due to the heat.  I hope to get to the site on the 19th to pick up the link radio and check it over.  It may need the same modification that I did on the 146.865 transmitter.  The 146.865 transmitter seemed to work without failing during the net except for the times that we lost the UHF link.

7/19/07 – Removed the UHF link transmitter at the Hewitt site (transmits to the 146.865 at Mosinee Hill) to check it over and make the modification.  I hope to have it back up by the end of the weekend.

7/22/07 – Reinstalled UHF link transmitter at Hewitt for the link to Mosinee Hill.  The radio checked out OK, so I made the same modification to the TX power control circuit that was made to the 146.865 VHF transmitter.

10/12/07 – Installed a UHF corner reflector at the Fox55 tower for the link to Mosinee Hill.

10/15/07 – The transmitter had been kerchunking since Sunday so I checked the power out to make sure that nothing was wrong.  Looks OK – about 60 watts out to the hardline.

11/13/07 – The transmitters on 146.865 and 147.135 were kerchunking again.  It was still acting up when I got out to the Fox55 tower and found that the status tone detector on the Signal Quality Module (SQM) for Bevent was out of tune.  I retuned the detector circuit and all is working fine now.

1/25/08 – Lost power to most of Rib Mountain including the tower on Mosinee Hill that this repeater is located at.  The generator ran perfect and we had no loss of service on this transmitter or the 147.735 satellite receiver and link.

3/12/08 – Noticed that the 146.865 transmitter isn’t working.  Will look at in the next couple of days.

3/14/08 – Went to look at the 146.865 transmitter and found that the fuse was blown on the power supply.  This also shut down the satellite receiver and both link radios.  Saw the old generator sitting in the parking lot, maybe the fuse blew when they were switching the generators.  The roof is also leaking very bad in the building.  I put a board over part of the top of the cabinet to try to keep the water from getting in to it.

4/26/08 – If you’ve been listening over the last couple of days, you would have heard that there were times that the transmit audio was OK and times when it was very low.  I tracked it down to the Abbotsford site and UHF link receive radio at Hewitt.  There were actually 2 problems.  The link receiver has low receive audio out to the voter and the satellite site at the Abbotsford tower has low audio coming to Hewitt.  It is unknown as to whether the problem at Abbotsford is the link transmitter or the 2M receiver.  For now, the Abbotsford site has been removed from the voter and the link receive radio has been removed for repair.  I hope to get to the Abbotsford tower in the next couple of weeks.

5/16/08 – Noticed that the 146.865 transmitter wasn’t working.  Ran some testes before going to Mosinee Hill and found that the satellite receiver and link transmitter were working and that the link transmitter from the Fox 55 tower was working.  After going up to the hill and running some more tests, I found the the 146.865 transmit radio was working and that there was no power out of the Mastr II PA.  The PA started working while trying to troubleshoot the problem.  So, don’t be surprised if it goes down again.  The roof of the building is in the process of being replaced.

5/25/08 – The 147.135, 444.100 and UHF link to Mosinee Hill went off the air during a SKYWARN event today.  When I got out the tower, the UPS was in shutdown.  I found that having the the 147.135, 444.100, and UHF link on the air for an extended time caused the UPS to go into shut down.  All these systems are on the same UPS.  I swapped a couple of things around on the UPSs to try to eliminate the problem.

5/29/08 – Noticed that the .865 transmitter was down again.  I will try to get up to Mosinee Hill tomorrow to look at it.

5/30/08 – Had the same problem with the Mastr II PA today as we had on 5/16/08.  Got some good checks in before it started working again.  The problem is somewhere in the RF sense circuit in the driver board.