2/21/2005: We are coordinated! We have received the offcial coordination papers for the KE4NYV 927.5125 machine.
12/23/2004: Final pictures of the completed machine are now up. (See Below)
12/13/2004: The 20A Astron has been installed in a handmade rack-mount tray. Both the repeater and power supply now have power poles installed. The hole left by the internal power supply we removed has been put to good use. We placed black screening in its place and placed a monitor speaker behind it we can now use to monitor the traffic locally when servicing the machine.
11/10/2004: The controller is installed and some final changes are being made. To simplify, the AC fan has been replaced with a DC fan. We also removed the internal power supply to use the recently aquired 20A Astron we bought from Fred Krack K4HVB. Now that there is no need for the AC receptacle inside the repeater case, we removed it. Now we just need to decide what to do with this gaping hole left by the vacant internal power supply.
10/25/2004: The holes for the LED's have been drilled on the front panel. Now to mount the controller, fans and we're ready for the mountain
10/21/2004: The controller finally came! But of course no project goes without headache. The NHRC-5 looks for a HIGH (voltage of 3VDC or higher). The Maxtrac was wired for the COR line to go LOW upon receive with PL. So, I had to go in and find another COR point. I found a pin on the Motorola IC that gives you the needed voltage when receiving. Came off of this and the controller comes up just fine now. Wired the controller to the power strip, so it comes on with the rest of the machine with the main power switch. One other issue was the controller's LED's. NHRC shows the 5 with right-angle LED's assumed for mounting on a panel, ours came with the LED's soldered straight in. I emailed support about the issue and still no response. I have concluded that I will have to go buy some LED's, bend the leads and solder them in instead. This is rather frustrating considering this controller cost $250!
7/22/2004: The back panel N connectors are finished being put in. The power distribution strip is in and the radios have been connected up to the power supply. The back panel power switch will now power up the whole machine in a flick of a switch. Once the controller is put in, it will power up with the radios as well. Look below for the updated pictures. The picture doesn't show, but we switched the radios around to keep any heat from the spectra from radiating into the receiver.
6/30/2004: We have done alot of work on cutting out the rack mount cabinet to hold the power supply, radios, duplexer and controller. New pictures of the progress has been posted.
5/20/2004: We peformed some initial tests last night with the modded spectra and maxtrac we're going to use on the repeater. Just twisted a few wires together and we had it singing. With the 25MHz seperation, even without the duplexer it worked great. This of course may change once we run everything through the duplxer and the cushcraft.
5/18/2004: So far we have found out that the 900 paging amp we bought has 2 stages connected up and can deliver roughly 50 watts with a 1 watt drive. Further investigation showed there is a third stage. At the time I write this we are unsure how much more power this can provide. We're hoping to bypass the PA section on the Spectra and use the exciter to directly drive the amp.
Final Pictures
A Special Thanks to:
Jim Mellon KA3IDN - Lots of 900 MHz guidance/tips and source of radios