From the NARA President
Ralph Hogan, W4XE

We had a good turnout at the Huntsville Amateur Radio Club / North Alabama Repeater Association kickoff meeting on 11 January 2008. Yours truly was reelected to the president position. Many thanks to Ron W4VM for running the election. Also thanks to John our VP for presiding over the meeting in my absence due to a business trip. We thank all the other officers of the club for their numerous contributions. We also welcomed Mark W4FMX as our new technical advisor.

Coming up in July we will hold our other bi-annual joint meeting with HARC. We will cover what has been going on with the repeaters up until that point in the year.

The three main repeaters of our system (146.940 / 147.180 / 443.500 ) are all comprised of the GE Master II series of repeaters. We have continued to enjoy their excellent reliability.  They remain a popular building block for ham repeaters due to their reliability. We plan this year on upgrading our 145.33 hardware to a GE Master II radio as well. The radio is already converted and tuned up.

We have installed a voter system on the 146.94 repeater. This is a wide coverage machine used for emergency communications during severe weather events. Due to our mountainous region, complete coverage is always a problem due to shadows created by the mountains. By strategically deploying remote receivers and a uhf link to them, we can fill in the holes of our coverage area. Currently we have one remote voter receiver located in the south part of Huntsville. We have another voter radio already tuned up and ready for deployment as soon as new crystals arrive. We are looking at a North-eastern site to install this second voter radio.  

One of our long time goals was to be able to link the 146.94 repeater to the 147.18 repeater. By linking these two together we have the benefit of the combined coverage of both machines. The 147.18 system is located south of the Tennessee River atop Brindlee Mtn. This was important to be able to provide better coverage for special events such as bike-a-thons that weave in and out of the hilly Huntsville terrain. The UHF link-up between the two has worked great and provided the necessary coverage for events this year.

Recently we upgraded the 147.18 controller to a CAT-1000. This matches the one up at our 146.94 site. The new controller allows us to ‘correctly’ tie into the IRLP system through a UHF remote link.

Another long time goal of the club was to provide automatic emergency power for the 147.18 and 146.94 systems. The Channel 31 TV site of 146.94 provides automatic AC emergency generator power. However one time during a weather event their generator did not start during a power failure. For this reason, we’ve also installed an automatic 12 VDC battery backup system at the site. Likewise at the 147.18 site we’ve installed the same automatic 12 VDC battery system. Many cudo’s to Gary N4TXI who came up with a modification for the stock GE power supply to allow a battery back and charger to be added to the GE power supply. Great work Gary!

Our 220 machine in the past has had it’s own issues. Bill KC0ONR took the system under his wing and has worked out the bugs. It now has excellent receiver sensitivity. He cleaned up the wiring of the system and added its own 12 VDC power supply. If you haven’t tried it in awhile, you’ll be surprised at how well it performs.

An upcoming goal is to retrofit all of the link radio antennas that hang off our 443.500 repeater. These provide 10 mtr, 6 mtr,, 146, 220, 440 and 1.2 GHz remote base capabilities. The existing antennas have weathered over time and are not performing as they should anymore.

It takes a lot of teamwork and hard effort to accomplish our goals. It also takes a very understanding family while you are away at a repeater site for hours on end. The NARA organization extends a heart-felt thank you to those that have tirelessly put forth effort to help maintain and improve the NARA repeater systems. We understand that not everyone can contribute in the technical aspects. It also takes a lot of funds to keep these machines alive. We appreciate the financial support of the membership and kind donations that we have received. These repeater systems provide a great service in time of need to the community.

73,

Ralph W4XE

NARA President 2008