As I write this it’s the wee hours of the morning. Josh and I spent the better part of Saturday working on the repeaters. We then took them up and re-installed them on the mountain. We got back to 911 at about 2:30 this morning.
We didn’t accomplish everything I had wanted to do, but we did get an amazing amount of work done. I decided not to put in the battery backed power supply until we move into the new permanent building at the end of summer. We also still need to replace some short coax jumpers.
Audio levels have been reset across the controller. I’m still not sure if it sounds better….I think it does. You tell me.
We wired up four of the analog inputs. Command 100 reads them and they are on I/O board 1 (we only have 1). The inputs are as follows:
- Temperature inside the building, right behind our radio rack.
- External temperature.
- RSSI from port 1 (the UHF repeater).
- RSSI from port 2 (the VHF repeater).
So if you enter “100 1 1 2 3 4” the controller will read these four inputs to you. Or you can select any one or more of them. It’s pretty cool to be able to know what your signal strength is into the repeater. I need to dial that in but for now a value of about 227 is maximum. Something around 50 is the noise floor. The temperature values seem to be very close. Don’t be surprised to see temps of around 80 inside the building as there is no AC and only a couple of box fans for cooling. It’s a cool 65 degrees outside right now on the mountain.
The control link is getting hammered by a lot of noise from the state’s 700 MHz system. I’ll need to find a clear channel for that. I also need to change that out with a full duplex link soon to allow me to do some very trick stuff (hint: voted receivers).
Another command most don’t know about uses the DVR to record your voice and play it back to you. This gives you an idea what your audio is like into the repeater. Enter “170” and then unkey. Then key up and give a test count or just say something and clear with your call sign. When you unkey again it will play back your last transmission. Try it!
With that, I’m off to slumber. It’s been a great day. Thanks to Josh for giving up his day with his girls to help with our repeater system. And thanks to my family for their support.
thanks Thor and Josh for going the extra mile for us that yse that repeater.
EPIC!!!! That is awesome!
Thor, Josh, thank you both for your hard work. Had I known and if I wasn’t working, I would have loved to help you out. Hopefully next time. Your work is very much appreciated.