Spring Cleaning Tune Up Day 2013 

Part II

We had some success and some failures on the rounds today. The Downtown site

we got rid of the nasty ground loop that had been bothering the system for a long while.

Basically what was done is we added a 600 ohm 1 to 1 transformer between the radio interface and the Linux controller and fixed the signal ground that was lacking. Also we gave the cooling fans their own power supply as well which helped in the motor noise issue.

The fan noise was masking the ground hum issue which was found after we moved the fan power supply source. so we had in reality 2 issues.

Here is a few pictures of the downtown site.

442.5500 Repeater & Linux Controller

Our Antenna Farm

2 of Our Fine Feathered Falcon Friends Nesting.

Our 927.1125 Repeater and the WB0KIA Central 224.100 Mhz Receiver Rack.  

The 900 Mhz repeater has a transmitter problem, so we will have revisit this on another day.

The 224.10 Central Receiver checked out and was working fine.

Next we had brunch at a local Denny's ( thanks Chuck! ) & then went out to the east side of 

Kansas City to our Booth Tower site. to repair some issues we had out there.

The 224.20 Repeater was restored to operational status after the feed line was damaged due to vandals this past fall. We also rebooted the LiveATC.net audio feed server so we could hear the KCI airport planes again.  As it had shut down after the storms the other night. Found out that the UPS battery has crapped out , so UPS batteries are on order now.

More to come..... All for now comments are invited. 

DrSmØke - WØNQX

Spring Cleaning & Tune Up Day - 2013

Sorry I have not posted here in a long while.

Some of the BYRG tech crew will have a work day on Thursday, April 11, 2013.

We hope to make several site visits to have "Spring Cleaning & Tune Up" on some of the BYRG
network sites. Such as the one shown below.

WBØYRG  442.550 Repeater Downtown Kansas City Mo

Also we will attempt to gain access to the site where a CERT repeater has a power supply
issue and get it going for another sister organization. We try and help out where and when we can.

WØLHK 442.150 Repeater in Overland Park, KS

You see the BYRG tech crew works on all kinds of things for us and other ham clubs.
We share our technical staff since some clubs & organizations don't always have the technical expertise or test equipment that we have, so we share our vast knowledge of this stuff in hoping we can get some younger fellows involved & interested in doing what we have done for the last 30 or so years.

Here is a few pictures of some of our repeater sites and gear that we have worked on over the years..

A D-Star repeater stack Dayton Hamvention.

A D-Star repeater stack Dayton Hamvention.

Yea, we do all kinds of repeaters and modes.
Analog, Digital, VHF, UHF, Microwave you name it we have probably done it!

The above tower was at the Dayton Hamvention for several years in a row. Yes, our group set that monster

up and had it hooked up to the iCom Main Display Booth inside the Hamvention Arena so folks could try out the latest Icom HF gear..  

Kansas City ATV Group Repeater Receive Antenna 

Yours truly at the Kansas City ATV Group Repeater Receive Antenna 300+ ft up AGL

All for now I will post some more pictures later.... :)

BYRG Summer Project

 ( click here BYRG Summer Project   to see more pictures)

An upgrade for the 442.550 repeater down town.

 

We have our donated rocks, Tnx to Bryce of Commenco
I tested all the rocks . 

All the RX ones work.

Could not see any activity on the TX ones,
 

But I did not try very hard as the mosquito's were thinking I 

was a large course meal!

They may have just needed tweaking to bring about some RF indication.

All for now comments invited

Sm0ke

May 5, 2012 - K0GQ RPT

K0GQ RPT - Antenna work

I am 902 Mhz Playing Again

It has been a bit since I last posted, I am baby sitting some Painters and Sheet Rockers as they continue to remodel the office areas of my work place.

Yes that is Paint Fog , the flash caught it in the air.

Sheet rockers have been here! - This will be our product display area.

So I thought I would do a bit of 902 Mhz playing as well.

Today I am testing the rx VCO lock range of a stock Kenwood TK-981 that has had the front end filters changed out to a set centered in the 902-928 Mhz ISM band where we as HAMs have a allocation to transmit & receive at for our scientific, educational & hobby use.

These filters are used to keep unwanted out-of-band RF junk out of our radios and to make them more sensitve to the desired part of the band ie 902-928 Mhz, originally they were center on the 936 mhz part of the commercial part of the LMR band, 929-960 Mhz areas.

As you can see removing and replacing these filters is no EZ task.
It is all surface mount components, all which take time and patience to do and of course the right tools.

This particular radio's VCO got flakey about 924.2625 Mhz , so I need to adjust the VCO voltages and see if I can bring it down in frequency some more. The goal is to get full band coverage 902-928 Mhz on the receiver.

  

All for Now

Comments Are Always Invited

Sm0ke

Cold Assed Day On A Roof Top !

Need I say more......... Cold Assed Day for a roof top visit! :)

Meetups mobilize against PIPA and SOPA - The Official Meetup HQ Blog

Meetups mobilize against PIPA and SOPA - The Official Meetup HQ Blog