01/02/07

Six Meter Repeater System

W4XE Trustee

This is an open repeater system supported by private individuals.

Mid 2006 the system was installed with a homebrew 6 meter duplexer. This allowed us to go to a single full duplex repeater site. The site is at our original 'North' Huntsville receiver site. A commercial version of a duplexer for 6 meters was way too costly so we tried out a heliax homebrew version. Some modification to the six heliax cavities were necessary to improve solid tuning during mechanical movement of the duplexer. A GE Exec II mobile was converted into a full duplex repeater as a test bed. The controller is an MCC RC-1000 two port autopatch unit. An Astron 50A power supply provides power. A UNIDEN FMU-250 UHF mobile was installed for linking the six meter repeater to any of a number of local UHF repeaters in the area.

Orignally this repeater system was  two repeater sites located on a mountain chain east of the city of Huntsville, AL. that runs in a roughly North-South direction. The sites were about 10 miles apart. The system did not utilize a duplexer. It was a split site system. The 6 meter receiver was linked to the 6 meter transmitter utilizing a one-way UHF link. The entire system is composed of GE Mastr II components.

Old North Receiver Site

Old South Transmitter Site

The 'new' full duplex 6 meter 'test' repeater. GE Exec II repeater, a RC-1000 repeater controller and a Uniden FMU250 UHF remote base radio for linking.

.

Here is the GE Exec II mobile during the conversion to a full duplex repeater. A TS-32 CG board was added. Also added was a PL tone HPF for audio filtering and a little transistor buffer inverter board. I had originally intended the GE Exec II to be a test bed for the six meter heliax duplexers. If the duplexer worked then I'd put up the full blown GE Mastr II repeater. The Exec II has been working so well I haven't needed to put up the GE Mastr II yet.

A set of six heliax duplexer cavities for a home brew duplexer.

The repeater site of 53.21 is NE of HSV on Monte-Sano Mtn, ~1600' above sea level (~600 HAAT) and located on a 130' tower. The machine has a 50-75 mile range at the outer limits which includes Alabama coverage of Huntsville, Madison, Decatur, Morgan City, Athens, Scottsboro, Guntersville and across the Tennessee border, 20 miles+ to our north.

W4XE ã 2005

Home | 443.625 | 444.300 | 145.23 AICN | Vital Statistics | 53.21

This site was last updated 01/02/07