I just received the sad news that our friend and fellow Amateur Radio operator Cooper Hodge, Jr. (KA4BKD) of Five Points, AL went SK on Friday, April 26th. Cooper was a participant/spotter in the East Alabama SKYWARN Network, an active supporter of the LaGrange, GA Amateur Radio Club, and was a well known and very […]
A Sure Way To End Any Future Droughts
I have figured out a sure-fire way to put an end to any future drought: Have a tower rigging crew scheduled to do work on one of the towers. Tomorrow is at least the fifth time I’ve had a crew scheduled to finish taking down a tower at one of the sites. But of course […]
A Busy Few Weeks with Broadcast Engineering Service Calls
Things have been crazy busy around here lately. Along with a notable increase in the number of duplexers coming in for tuning (some including repairs), there have been several broadcast engineering service calls. Here’s some of the fun that has been included. Retuning of Marti STL in order to get a new low power FM […]
Reinstalling the 72 MHz Simulcast Transmitter for Warm-Up Period
Just a couple of photos taken while reinstalling a Quintron 72 MHz paging system simulcast transmitter for a client. This is the “main” simulcast transmitter. We switched over to the “backup” transmitter to give it another workout while pulled and I did a re-check of this transmitter, which I had repaired and realigned back around […]
KE4COL 145.230 Gold Hill / Auburn, AL Repeater Now Running on Mastr III
The KE4COL 145.230(-) Gold Hill / Auburn, AL repeater is back to running on a Harris Mastr III machine. I spent Saturday, 2/9/19 reconfiguring, reprogramming, and realigning this machine for Lee (KE4COL) and he transported it to the repeater site and fired it up on Sunday, 2/10/19. There were a few audio drive/distortion issues on […]
Swann Surveillance Systems Plagued By Cheap Power Supply Burnouts
If you own one of the Swann brand multi-camera surveillance systems (I maintain multiple systems at multiple locations) and it has one of these type power supplies (see figure 1 and figure 2), BEWARE! These power supplies are almost 100% guaranteed to fail. To make matters worse, before they fail completely they are very likely […]
Paging System Simulcast Signal Monitoring & Telemetry System Build
Doing the engineering work on a multi-site, simulcast paging system necessitates keeping a check on the operational status of several transmitters which are — by design — geographically spread out all over the place. Anything which can automate some of the process of testing (and, ideally, provide remote, real-time monitoring) is a huge help. Not […]
Registered DMR User Databases Still Experiencing Rapid Growth
The number of registered DMR users is still growing rapidly. Interest in DMR is definitely not waning. In fact, I’d love to know just how many folks bought themselves their first DMR radio (or were gifted with one) for Christmas. It wouldn’t surprise me to see a surge in the number of new registrations for […]
Lots Going On This Week – Auburn Tower, Transmitter Service, etc.
Well, it’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon… wait, we aren’t in Lake Wobegon, are we? Nope. And there is quite a lot going on around here lately. The tower replacement in Auburn is progressing nicely: they’re stackin’ it high so the signals can fly. While those guys are going up… up… up… I’ve […]
Installation of Female N-Type Connector on 1-5/8″ RFS Cellflex Cable
One of those jobs that takes 10 minutes to do, but a lot of time overall (and a lot of effort) moving tools and equipment around. Terminated this 550′ spool of RFS LCF158 corrugated coaxial feedline with an RFS NF-LCF158-D01 female N-type connector yesterday afternoon. While it was one of those fun projects, it was […]