After well over a decade of service to the Keene area, 443.80 has been
upgraded with a new controller. The repeater, located at the top of the CH52 TV
tower just North of Keene first went on the air back in the late 80's. Perhaps
a little of the Repeaters history is in order here. When I first came down to
the Keene Area, working for New Hampshire Public TV, it didn't take long to find
that there were no UHF repeaters that covered Keene very well, or at least none
that Keene could call it's own. So, luckily for me, (and I guess I could say the
Amateurs of Keene too), the TV station was in the process of replacing all of it's
GE Mastr Pro mobile units with new dash mount radios. With smaller service
vehicles coming on-line, the old Mastr's just didn't fit too well in the new
Blazers and Pick-Ups. So, this created an over abundance of UHF single frequency
radios that really weren't worth too much. Now seeing as how 4 out of the 5 Transmitter
Techs were Hams, the radios were "sort of" re-assigned to other areas. And seeing as
how one of the 3 other Hams really didn't want or need the couple radios he had in
his possession, well, I volunteered to "store" those for him.
Now I gotta tell you, there's a lot more to setting up a repeater than just
getting a radio and turning the thing on. You need a pair of frequencies, a place
to put it, antenna(s), feedline, a set of duplexers, controller(s), and a little
technical know how to get it all put together and make it play, oh yeah, and a
transmitter and receiver - about the only thing I did have.
I then applied for a frequency pair, actually requesting the pair that it's
on now and after that was approved, I set about getting things together. I got the
radio re-tuned, down from the commercial band to the Amateur band. What a piece of
cake that was, no modifications required. Only the installation of the new
crystals - remember those? The next thing that I got was a repeater controller
from a fairly new Company called S-Com, out in Colorado. I had seen an add in
73 Magazine for them and the model they were advertising was the 5K. All preassembled,
tested and ready to go. All for under a couple hundred bucks. This was pretty much
unheard of in those days, but it sounded like it would do everything that I needed
it to, and it was remotely programmable, had virtually unlimited programming
capabilities and was very flexible. ID's, Tail times, Time-Out-Timers, Courtesy
beeps, etc So, I ordered one. A short time later it arrived and the programming
began. The manual for the controller was a 3 ring binder, and thicker than the
service manual for the radio. I hooked up a receiver (HT) to the input and enabled
the COR with a line from the HT, that I had modified, and a little audio amp to the
output of it, so I could hear the responses from the 5K. One of the first things
you need to do, is assign it the callsign. What a thrill it was to hear WA1ZYX/R KEENE
coming from the speaker for the first time. It wasn't even on the air yet, but that
was still pretty cool. Don't forget, this is all in CW now.
Sometime along the way the first repeater antenna was ordered and installed
just above the tree line on the tower. It was a Ringo Ranger II for 440. Humm, cute,
wonder if it'll work. After the controller was connected to the radio and checked
out, that appeared to work just fine. The new mobile converted to repeater was hooked
up to the antenna and the switch was thrown. The UHF machine was now officially on
the air. Arnie, N1BAC and I had the first QSO on the new Keene UHF machine. I think
there were 3 of us on UHF at that time. Arnie, Chuck - KA1MTM and this new guy - me.
Coverage sucked, (answer to cute, wonder if it'll work - Nope) but none the less, it
was playing! It didn't take long (probably about an hour) to make the decision that
the repeater antenna must be higher, and it might not hurt to have a better antenna
too. Things sure do act differently on UHF vs VHF.
Shortly after that, the TV station contracted with Motorola to completely
replace its repeater system and add another site. This now meant that something
had to be done with the old GE Mastr Pro repeaters that were on the mountain tops - those
being Cannon and Kearsarge. Well, as luck would have it, a short conversation with my
boss ended with something to the effect of, "if you want 'em, you get 'em off the
mountain". Sounded like a challenge that just had to be taken. This actually wasn't
too bad. Not wanting to sound greedy, I volunteered to take the equipment off
Cannon Mtn. It was a little further away than Kearsarge, but I had a ride down the
mountain - aka, the Tramway!
The repeaters were called "Desk Mates", and trust me, it wasn't because they sat
on a desk. These things weighed a ton! This acquisition got a little easier though,
because when I got ready to remove them, there was a ton of snow already up on Cannon.
You might think that would make carrying repeater cabinets quite a bit more difficult,
but not on a ski patrol toboggan. Because these Mastr Pro Deskmates used tubes in the
final stages of the transmitter, you needed some pretty heavy transformers in the
power supplies, so the toboggan and Tramway were a great asset in removal, which
meant we didn't have to lug them all the way down. FYI, I only rolled the toboggan
over once, but the snow was soft enough that we didn't slide far and the doors on
the repeater cabinets kept everything inside nice and dry! We got 'em down, and
loaded in my truck and back to Keene I came. Okay, now the best part was that these
babies use the exact same transmitter and receiver strips as the mobiles. They just
make them capable of putting out more power. I had all the service manuals, so really
all I needed to do was take the strips out of the converted mobile and put them in the
Deskmate repeater cabinet, figure out the audio and control I/O lines, and hook the 5K
controller into the Deskmate cabinet. That didn't take too long and after a couple
hours, the WA1ZYX/R UHF Keene Machine version 2 was on the air. More power, better
heat dissipation because of the fans blowing across the transmitter (part of the
Deskmate station) and I got rid of the "singing" that the solid state plate voltage
supply generated on the mobile strips.
ZedYX/R version 3 happened when the TV station received the new stationmaster antennas
for the new Motorola system. Once again, about the same conversation happened with my
boss, and once again, I volunteered to grab the stuff off Cannon. This trip provided
me with a real repeater antenna, a 20-foot long +/- white fuzzy fiberglass wonder stick.
Fuzzy because it had been subjected to the extreme weather conditions on Cannon for a
few years, and sleet blowing across any surface at sometimes over 100 MPH is very
similar to sandblasting. After a little research, I found a nice glossy white paint
to get rid of the fuzz and seal the antenna before subjecting it to more years of
nasty weather on a tower just North of Keene.
Something else that was desperately needed was some decent feedline to replace the
9913 I had been using up to now. I came across a real sweet deal in the "Yellow Sheets" -
remember those? - Which produced a little over 400 feet of 7/8 Heliax.
Soon after the reel of cable arrived by truck, and having some galvanized
side mount brackets for the antenna made, an antenna raising party was assembled.
I think there were 5 or 6 of us, with three on the tower. I had to get a ton of
stainless clamps for the cable, connectors for the feedline at almost $60 bucks a
pop and tow line and pulleys to rig the tower with and a multitude of other stuff
to make this all happen. It was an all day project to get the stationmaster about
360 feet up the tower, but boy was it worth it! The other 40 or so feet of cable
was needed to get from the base of the tower to the repeater inside my office. When
the repeater end of the cable had its connector finally installed and connected to
the repeater and then turned on, what a difference. We could officially say there
WAS a presence on UHF in Keene now. We were amazed at the coverage we now had. We
knew it would be good, and we were really pleasantly surprised.
Version 4 came a couple years later when the TV station was having some
serious tower work done to strengthen it for some new renters. WKNE FM was moving
onto our tower, as was CellOne with a cell phone site. Over the previous years I
got to know the tower crews quite well, and worked well with them, so while they
were doing stuff near the top of the tower, I asked if they had a few minutes if
they'd hang a new antenna up at the top for me. I forgot to mention earlier, that
I had acquired a couple of those long white things. I didn't need them to haul
cable up, I just wanted it mounted for now, I'd get it hooked up one way or another
later on. So off I went to get another set of galvanized mounts made. A couple
days later, and I had a stationmaster at the TOP of the tower, almost another 100
feet higher. That stayed that way for several weeks until we came up with a short
run of 7/8 to join with what was already in place. Buzz - WA1NHP found a chunk of
feedline and scrambled up the tower to mount that. This change again produced
outstanding results. The pattern changed a little and coverage was improved again.
I believe that version 5 happened after the birth of ZedYX/R #2 and 3, over
on Saddleback Mtn and up on Cannon Mtn. Version 5 was the addition of links to the
other repeaters. They weren't used too much, and only a very limited amount of
stations had the controls to turn them on. There were a few things that you needed
to be aware of, and I never felt comfortable letting the codes out into the general
ham population. NHOEM loved it though, because the 3 repeaters linked provided
almost statewide communications.
Over time, the good 'old GE Mastr Pro became pretty finicky. It needed
lots of TLC, the final tubes had been replaced a couple times and they were getting
harder and harder to find. I was using other mobile strips for parts and it was just
getting tired. After all, the Mastr had been living on Cannon Mtn since about 1970
give or take, so it was old enough to vote when it went into Amateur Radio service.
A much heavier duty then the commercial life it had been living. That's when version
6 happened. Another friend of mine had this beautiful 75 watt solid state Motorola
Micor repeater in a 5 foot cabinet just begging for a home. I little wheeling and
dealing later, and the Micor was headed for Keene. This repeater was configured as
a Medical repeater, so it was in the high 460 range. About 20 megs higher than
where I needed it. I did have the service manuals and I knew another friend that
had modified Motorola's before and had access to the parts needed for conversion
so I made arraignments with him to get it going after I had ordered and installed
the crystals - remember those? The repeater was working just fine in its current
configuration, so there wasn't much sense in waiting for it to be brought down into
the ham band before putting the controller on it. So that's what I did in the few
weeks while I waited for the crystals to arrive from ICM.
The parts came and he did a great job getting it modified. I got it back to the
site, plugged in the controller and it was pretty much plug & play. It worked
great - in fact, it still is. Eventually, the links disappeared because I
needed an antenna or two that were used for the links on Packet.
This brings us now to version 7, the replacement of the 5K controller with the
new 7K controller.
The very idea of replacing the controller actually really began quite a while
ago. I just wasn't too serious about it. However, as time rolled on, and donations
rolled in (Thanks everybody!), and conversations happened that mentioned the links,
I figured it was time to really move on this project - as if I needed another project.
I have been in contact with the people at S-Com via E-Mail for quite a while, and in
fact have been working on a project for their website for a while. Anyway, as it
turns out, one of the main guys there, Dave, WA1JHK is from Nashua, so he's quite
familiar where Keene is, and mentioned spending some time during the summers on
Spofford Lake. Customer support and correspondence is nothing short of fantastic!
I finally ordered the new S-Com 7K, minus an auto-patch board, because I'm already
running a secondary controller for the "patch" which so far, seems to play just fine.
It's just not too fancy.
S-Com had a deal running where you (I) could receive a $100 dollar credit toward the
purchase of a new 7K by turning in any kind of controller, working or not. A radio
call produced the old Icom repeater controller that I ripped out of the repeater on
Cannon when I installed a 5K in it. I had given the old one to Arnie - N1BAC a few
years ago and he happened to have it still kicking around. Realistically, it wasn't
worth the postage it cost to send it to Colorado, so I figured $100 credit was a
pretty good deal.
A week or so later, and this box arrived containing the new 7K. I tore into that
to check out the controller, and the first thing that I located was the manual in
another 3-ring binder just about ready to burst at the seems. Along with the manual,
was a package of addendums to be inserted into the binder because of the numerous
software revisions to the controller. After replacing the correction sheets, the
binder was really ready to explode, so I divided it into two binders. At least now
I can work with it/them.
I figured that being another Scom, the plugs on the controllers would be a perfect
match. Well, I was wrong. Same kind of connector, but not too many of the needed
audio or control lines were on the same pins. So...I made up a short interface
cable that would mate with the 7K and the plug currently installed on the repeater
from the 5K. That would make it very easy to interface to the repeater. When the
time came, after several days of programming - don't forget that I haven't had to
program a repeater controller for quite a few years by this time, and I pretty much
was starting over by learning how to write macros, set up passwords etc.
Fortunately, the majority of the functions that were common to both the 5K and
the 7K used the same commands, so some of the programming was already done.
(I'm very good at documenting what I've got programmed into the controllers!!)
One thing I hadn't planned on was, because the 7K directly supports linking or
two individual repeaters on one controller, was that EVERY CW and Voice message/ID
had to be told which port the message was to go out on, and if the message was
allowed to mix with the receiver(s) audio, or mute it. Anyway, I figured it out
okay, and when the time came, the official installation of the 7K happened.
Because of the interface cable I had made earlier, it really was Plug-n-Play!
I didn't even have to mess with the audio levels much. Plugged it in, and turned
the repeater back on. It didn't take long for people to notice something
different about the way it ID'ed.. It was with Voice AND CW now.
So here we are at Version 8, the addition of the remote base for linking to
Saddleback, Cannon and a bunch of other UHF machines. Packet at this point
has pretty much died a slow death, and isn't anywhere nearly as active as it
was in the early 90's. So I reclaimed the original link yagi for the remote
base. I had a 2 channel GE Phoenix-SX that I had modified to a 16 channel
remotely controlled radio to use as the remote base radio. Naturally, this
required a TON of additional programming to the 7K. Anyway, I have since
done this and it all works pretty slick. Let's see how long before version 9 happens...
11:06 AM on 12/18/2001
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