A set of Motorola T-1504A duplexer cavities arrived yesterday for repairs, overhaul, tuning, and testing. I managed to get them turned around in less than 24 hours. They will be on their way back to California tomorrow. The owner of this set sent them to me because they would not tune. On opening and […]
As of about 5 a.m. today (April 21, 2018) the KE4COL 145.230(-) 123.0 Repeater at Gold Hill, AL is operating on the G.E. Mastr II again. The Yaesu Fusion repeater is back to serving as an emergency/standby repeater in case of problems with any of our repeaters. With nasty weather on tap for the next […]
It took me a while to gather the hardware and get everything ready to build this GMRS repeater for K6JFS, but I finally got around to getting it done this morning. It actually went very smoothly, expecially considering the fact I had to completely replace the original PLL type exciter with a non-PLL type and […]
The 444.100(+) WA4QHN Salem, AL repeater recently started developing serious sensitivity problems, so the owner and I pulled it out of service and brought it here to my QTH so that I could troubleshoot the repeater and duplexers and get it back in shape. As soon as I hooked the repeater up here in the […]
KE4COL’s 145.230 MHz Gold Hill, AL 2-Meter Mastr II repeater developed some issues a while back, and I finally got around to putting it in the rack and troubleshooting it today. He’s been running his Fusion repeater as a backup during that time, but we’ve all been looking forward to getting the Mastr II back […]
As many of you know, I’ve been engaged in a battle with out of control diabetes recently, along with the other two main physical conditions. I’m pleased to say that the blood sugar is getting under better control. Related to that, my time and energy are limited — much more so than in my younger […]
I had to run to Shorter, AL this morning to find out why the 442.075(+) repeater was getting stuck in transmit. As it turned out, the link radio (which I had left powered off last site visit because it’s not being used pending some system changes) had gotten turned back on somehow. The squelch circuit […]
As part of an ongoing discussion with a fellow ham up in New York, I thought I’d share a little virtual tour of my soldering/desoldering and SMD rework center. This setup is the result of equipment put together over the course of 36 years. There are still two more pieces of equipment I wish to […]
I managed to finish the refurbishing of the last two cavities on that set of Motorola T-1504 UHF BP/BR duplexers yesterday. These are headed to a new home on a repeater down in Florida. They’re working great, doing just over 102 dB of isolation per branch, and only 1.1 dB of insertion loss per branch. […]
As much as I prefer to avoid letting my physical pains show, today is one of those days when my body says “Oh, yeah? Not today, buddy!” I started out the day trying to finish up refurbishing the remaining two of the four cavities on this set of Motorola UHF duplexers. Unfortunately, I got this […]