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Back to January 1996 Newsletter
Spectrum International has informed me that they plan to ship a new designed low loss VSB filter in late January and we will be able to evaluate it on Santiago Peak. If we like the results we can get it at a special price; details at the meeting. We have received a notice from the site manager that the other Amateur systems will be moving to the loft to make room for the commercial systems as the floor is full in the main room. We built the loft about 4 years ago and it is in two parts: the inner loft is sectioned off and is exclusive to ATN and has a locked door, the outer loft is open. Due to more ham systems over the years installed in the building we may have to squeeze our operation down and remove our monitors etc. to make room for several systems in our room. I hope we can fit the other ham systems into the existing outer loft or get approval to extend the loft, more on this at the meeting.
Mike, KC6CCC and Al, KF6YM has set up a temporary link near Al's QTH to receive the output of Blueridge and microwave it to Santiago. Thank you Al and Mike for all your wonderful efforts. The permanent link will be transmitted from Blueridge on 2417 and beam bender at WA6SVT QTH to relay this signal to Santiago (split site between my QTH and my neighbor's QTH). Also at this location will be a beam bender for 1253.25 the Santiago output to Blueridge and the Victorville area. Mike, WA6SVT donated a complete 1253 MHz receiver and VSB filter and it is installed at Blueridge. The beam Bender antennas are also installed at WA6SVT's QTH.
Kevin, KA6IJA donated a beautiful rack mounted cabinet for the computer. Thank you Kevin. Curt, N6TWB is planning to add the interface for some telemetry of the controller and programming upgrade. Thank you in advance for your upcoming efforts. I have prepared the cabinet to house the computer and will build a DC power supply to give uninterrupted power to the computer from the battery bank on site.
The link transmitter from Oat Mt. is at my QTH awaiting a 5 watt amplifier to improve the link reliability from Oat. Sorry for the delay but the high altitude sites had to be serviced before we got snowed out. Well that's about it for the Santiago report and I want to again thank the above mentioned ATN members and also all of you who have helped over the years to make ATN the best ATV system around!
Inputs: 919.25 VSB (user switchable) Touch Tone 268 on intercom frequency for AM Input.
915.0 FM +/- 6 MHz Touch Tone "C" for FM input. Audio Subcarrier 5.8 MHz.
2430 MHz FM +/-6 MHz Audio Subcarrier 5.8 MHz. Note this is used for incoming link from Santiago Peak, NASA Select, and is being used as a user input when link is not on until a 2441.5 user input is installed.
146.430 MHz intercom coordination frequency PL 79.7. Note: Picture ID is activated and audio is retransmitted when intercom is brought up for testing purposes.
Output: 1241.25 VSB Power-Out 100 Watts PEP. Antenna Gain 10 dBd.
Location: The south slope of Palomar Mountain at the 5,600 foot level. The Palomar Amateur Radio Club owns a 1/3 acre site with three buildings, 5600 AHr. battery backup power system, an 80 foot tower, and operates 1-6M, 5-2M, 2-1.25M, and 3-70cm repeater/nodes from this site besides the ATV repeater.
The current ATV incoming link is on Murray Ridge at Sibyl's QTH (W6GIC).
We have not decided on a final link site, but most of the equipment has been purchased for completing a two way link to Santiago Peak. We lost the first site when a club member moved back to San Diego. A replacement site has yet to be selected and the link tower is being stored on the Palomar Club property. More information will be available after our repeater technical meeting this month.
Currently covering Kern county, this repeater's importance to ATN is a link to northern California. The plans call for linking to Mt. Oso then to Mt. Diablo in the Bay area. In November, WA6SVT, Doug Law, and I made a trip to the site, installed a new eprom with WQ6I on it, added a larger dish antenna aimed back to Blueridge which gave a great picture. We did not finish implementing the improvements planned...it was very cold up there and by 11:00 pm we had all we could take. I have delivered to WA6SVT a 1/4db filter (PSF 1280), a VOR 2 board, ATVR 12 IF receiver xtal, coax and a Conifer 25T-2400 dish to be aimed at Mt. Oso, 187 miles away.
If the ATN network decides to maintain this site...1996 should be the year that we see the whole state of California...if not, we have state of the art equipment that can be used at another site.