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Repairs & improvements at VK3RBA in recent times - VK3BA - 18-05-2024
G'day All, there's been a fair bit of work go on at Mt Buninyong in recent times...
On Friday, Tim VK3TIM and Shaun VK3KK spent the day fault finding & diagnosing the ongoing issues with the RBA 2m repeater. It was eventually tracked down to a radio that was in standby mode from another agency, that mainly operates during summer. It has since been isolated and Tim has developed a solution for this to suppress the intermod issues in future.
On Saturday, Tim VK3TIM with the assistance of Shaun VK3KK, Tony VK3UBO and Nik VK3BA spent most of the day up there again, replacing a waterlogged feeder, removed any redundant steelwork, rusty bolts, etc, replaced an antenna, removed a faulty antenna, re-arranged part of the filtering chain, installed some new internal feedlines between racks, replaced the 23cm repeater with a new Kenwood based 23cm repeater and fixed a fault with the 10m simplex repeater. There is a slight new noise getting into the 23cm repeater, but it’s not dominant and set for further investigation. These things can often work well on the test bench, but put them up on a prominent site and new issues can arise.
Tim and Shaun have spent a fair bit of time up there in recent weekends, giving the whole site a makeover. There is still plenty to do, but the 2m, 70cm & 23cm repeaters and link radios are now working very well. Tonight we had a report from Chris VK3AML in East Burwood that he was hearing the 2m repeater at 5x9 +20 and the best he’s ever heard this repeater. Steve VK3ZH in Ringwood has reported tonight that the RBA 2m repeater is a vast improvement to his location. That’s an excellent report and validation of the work carried out over recent times.
Our next main project is to convert the 10m repeater into a duplex device, with large church-organ-pipe like cavity filters and crystal filters from California to make this all work and has been an ongoing work in progress by Tim VK3TIM.
I’d also like to acknowledge Andy VK3AS for his generous contribution around many of the improvement costs around the VK3RBA site as well. Thanks must also go to Amateur Radio Victoria for their assistance with this site.
In the interim for a while, the 2m & 23cm repeaters will often be linked together via an IP connection for testing & observation purposes.
We’d like to think that the improved 2m repeater will be a much better experience for everyone in the Ballarat and surrounding area.
Cheers,