Hi, and Welcome to the Official WebSite of WA1ZYX and KA1QFA
and the UHF Keene Machine, 443.800+ 141.3 PL.
My name is Joel, and have the privilege of holding the Amateur Extra
Class callsign of WA1ZYX. This is my original call, and I have held that
call since 1976 after obtaining it while still in high school. Click this link
if you're interested in seeing the actual proof. Use your back button to return
to the home page. My wife, Becky holds the call of KA1QFA. She decided to get her ticket
after we met, probably to keep track of me -- grin....
We also have two very busy little boys. Tyler (or "T" as we call him)
is the BIG brother (The ham community knows him as K1D) and little
brother is Austin (K1DO, he changed his call from B0Y right after birth).
We are also both active in the Cheshire County DX
Amateur Radio Club, and we have been active with the club ever since it began.
This club is also affiliated with the ARRL. For what
it's worth, I am also a VE and sort of "specialize" in the VHF Operations as
well as Repeater Operations. Hummmm, wonder why....
Please feel free to check out my On-Line Repeater Operations
PowerPoint presentation.
I also am a member of the Yankee Clipper Contest Club.
I'm also quite active on the HF bands and have a lot of fun contesting
with some of the other folks from the club. I also have a lot of fun with
all kinds of digital modes on HF, VHF and UHF.
The Keene UHF Repeater on 443.800 + requires a PL of 141.3Hz for
access. The repeater is an open system, although the autopatch is closed.
It is located on the WEKW TV tower which overlooks downtown Keene from
about 8 miles NorthWest of the City, in the Southwestern part of NH
in Cheshire County, which is also referred to as "The Monadnock
Region". The tower is on a ridge of mountains that also
overlook the Connecticut River Valley allowing the repeater to cover
portions of 4 States including;
New Hampshire, Vermont, Mass and some of Connecticut.
WA1ZYX/R KEENE first went on the air in April of 1988 - I think,
maybe it was '87, anyway, at that time I was running a modified GE
Mastr Pro mobile radio. I then upgraded to a Mastr Pro Base station
which was replaced a couple years later with a Motorola Micor unified chassis
base station. (Those Final tubes for the Mastr Pro were expensive,
and hard to find!)
Sometime in Nov of '97, we switched from using a single Celwave Super
StationMaster to a 4 channel Wacom Combiner. We're now using the StationMaster
as the receive antenna at an overall elevation of about 1960' AMSL.
This antenna is at the very top of the tower. The Transmit antenna is a
DB Products DB-420 folded dipole array located less than 50 below
the StationMaster.
Both antennas are side mounted and fed with about 500' of 7/8" Andrews
Heliax.
The repeater is controlled by an
7K controller which
went on-line May 1, 1999, and a Connect Systems Autopatch controller so we can make phone calls.
A Hamtronics PreAmp helps perk up the Micor's hearing a little. The repeater puts
out about 75 watts into the combiner.
Listen to one of the Repeater Voice ID's here.
This is a WAV file of one of about a dozen different ID's that rotate.
The month of August '99 was a busy month while I was busy interfacing a
GE Phoenix-SX UHF remote base to the repeater so that we can now do linking
to Cannon, Saddleback, Kearsarge and a dozen or so others. I had to do some
modifications to the Phoenix to allow for remote control of the frequencies.
If you're interested in learning how to modify your Phoenix-SX, I have written
a Phoenix-SX Mods page.
Also, if you want to read about the complete History of the UHF Keene Repeater
check this out.
By looking at the above picture, if you see what resembles a person
swinging around on the outside of the tower, it is. We had a tower crew
at the site installing antennas for one of the local FM's.
I also own and operate several UHF Amateur Repeaters that
are scattered around the State of New Hampshire, and a TheNet
Packet node.
In fact, the user port antenna for the SWNH/SWNHU/NHDX/KEENE TheNet node stacks is at
the 300 foot level of the tower. There are currently 9 TNC's,
with radios operating on 3 bands with baud rates up to 9600 at the site.
See the SWNH page for more info.
WA1ZYX/R number 2 is located on Saddleback Mountain
on NHPTV's main CH-11 Tower in the town of Deerfield. This is not too far
from the Coast of NH.
The repeater itself is an Icom RP-3010 going to a set of Wacom duplexers,
through about 500' of Andrews 7/8 Heliax to a Celwave Super Stationmaster
which is side mounted almost to the top of the Main CH-11 TV tower.
Saddleback is 449.45 - and requires a PL of 123.0Hz.
WA1ZYX/R number 3 lives on the summit of Cannon Mountain at the top of Franconia Notch, home of the famous Old Man of the Mountain
and the Arial Tramway.
The Cannon Machine is also an Icom RP-3010, going to another set of Wacom
duplexers through about 40 feet of Andrews 1/2" Heliax to a brand new
(9/98) DB-404 antenna which is top mounted on the NHPTV microwave tower.
The ground elevation at the summit is 4380 feet.
Cannon is 449.875 - and also requires a PL of 123.0Hz for access.
The Cannon repeater is basically a "twin" to the Saddleback repeater. If you're
interested in looking at a few more picture of this site, take a look at
the new Cannon Repeater Site page.
I also have strong ties to a 4th machine located on Mt Kearsarge, in the Town of Warner, NH.
Mt Kearsarge produces some very nasty weather conditions, and
the icing that takes place in the winter time is really quite a sight! Actually
Cannon is quite spectacular too. Take a look and you'll see what
I mean. I'll post a few more pictures of all the sites when I get a chance.
If you'd like to see some of the pictures that I took of Mt Kearsarge
right after a pretty good ice storm, make sure you look at the
Winter Wonderland page.
It really is very beautiful!
All of the ZedYX repeaters are normally configured as "stand alone", and
they are all open. (Occasionally, they are linked to each other, but I really
don't see the point in tying up an entire state with two stations talking in
the same town. Having the ability to link to the others makes much more
sense to me.)
On the work side of things, I used to work full time for New Hampshire Public Television.
While I was working as a TV Transmitter Tech, I had to work on several
UHF TV transmitters, the three UHF Two-way repeaters that were all
linked, the main CH-11 VHF Transmitters and all kinds of Microwave
systems. Not to mention, tower work, feedlines, antennas, mountain-top
building maintenance plus a variety of other things. The job had it's "moments", but for the most part, it was at times a
very fun and educational job. I got to travel all over the state and be involved
in a lot of "behind the scenes" things that the viewers never even knew were going
on. I often wonder if anybody watching TV ever really thought about
what's involved in keeping a TV station on the air, never mind an entire network
with 5 transmitters. I even video taped the RF Engineering department installing
a microwave repeater on the summit of Mt Washington a few years ago.
(Yes, I'm in it....) At the time I taped it, there were initial thoughts that this
might make an interesting documentary of just what we all do, but sad to say,
after the master tape was copied back at the studio, nothing further
ever came of it. Oh well, so much for my 15 minutes of fame....
Anyway, by having this job, I had access to some pretty nice "hill tops", and
that's why all the repeaters, nodes, and links happened. I still do work
for NHPTV part-time, so this allows me continued access to them.
My primary responsibilities now only have me watching over the
WEKW Channel 52 transmitters outside of Keene.
I did this for about 8 years before transferring to Keene State College to run the Dispatch/Comm Center for the Dept of Campus Safety. I also am a Patrol Officer with the department too.
I do this during the daylight hours.
On occasion I operate the Campus-Wide switchboard. This frequently
produces some pretty funny stories. Some of the stories give the
callers the proud distingtion of winning the "Stupid Call of the Day" award.
If you're interested in reading some of our stories, check out the
Switchboard.
As more "tails" become worthy of making the "Switchboard", I'll post them....
I also have a couple other jobs out in the real world, away from
the college environment. I get my fill of "Real" law enforcement during the nights,
working for the Town of Surry NH as a
Police Lieutenant. I also am the Communications Officer and the "IT" for the town.
I also worked for about 12 years for the
Swanzey Police Department.
I was a Police Corporal and the Communications Officer for that
Department too.
Although Cheshire County doesn't typically have a large amount
of major crime, (thankfully) it does have it's moments and is certainly
subject to the same types as found anywhere else. For example, these
are just a couple of newspaper articles with calls I've been
involved with. The first one is a motorcycle that actually hit me
and knocked me on my butt in the middle of the road. This happened
the same night there was an Officer involved in a shooting in Keene.
The other is about an intoxicated (rather heavily, I might add) man
with a semi-auto hiding in the woods.
Motorcycle Chase Intoxicated Armed Man In my spare time, I might also be dispatching for the New Hampshire State Police
at Troop-C in Keene, where we're still in the process of going "on-line"
with our new Motorola Astro radio System! That's a really cool system, "when it
works", allowing us virtually state-wide communications with any of the State units.
Stay tuned for more additions, changes, and links.
If you have any questions or comments, you can E-Mail me by clicking on the mailbox below:
WA1ZYX/R KEENE first went on the air in April of 1988 - I think,
maybe it was '87, anyway, at that time I was running a modified GE
Mastr Pro mobile radio. I then upgraded to a Mastr Pro Base station
which was replaced a couple years later with a Motorola Micor unified chassis
base station. (Those Final tubes for the Mastr Pro were expensive,
and hard to find!)
Sometime in Nov of '97, we switched from using a single Celwave Super
StationMaster to a 4 channel Wacom Combiner. We're now using the StationMaster
as the receive antenna at an overall elevation of about 1960' AMSL.
This antenna is at the very top of the tower. The Transmit antenna is a
DB Products DB-420 folded dipole array located less than 50 below
the StationMaster.
7K controller which
went on-line May 1, 1999, and a Connect Systems Autopatch controller so we can make phone calls.
A Hamtronics PreAmp helps perk up the Micor's hearing a little. The repeater puts
out about 75 watts into the combiner. 
View the ZedYX Guestbook
WebMaster WA1ZYX
7:14 PM on 03/16/2001
