Aerial Work at The Staffordshire Moorlands Repeater Site.

In making the most of this weekends dry weather, the annual pre-winter engineering examination of the Staffordshire Moorlands aerial
installation for the GB3SM and GB3SX repeaters has been completed.
With the repeater site located at 1140 feet above sea level, it’s not the type of engineering work easily carried out in the middle of winter
with gale force winds and four feet of snow on the ground.
My thanks go to Paul 2E1EUB and Phil G4SCY for all the ladder work involved, these days I prefer (whenever possible) to keep my feet firmly on the ground.

Further to my message NUMBER 1893: >>> I also intend to design and build a suitable interface to enable full Remote Control of the repeaters output power to hopefully make testing of the current problem and situation a little easier. Once the interface (yet to be designed, built and installed) is on site, the repeaters transmitter output power will be reduced as required <<<.

The news is I’ve now completed the design work involved plus fully built and bench tested the said mentioned interface and I’m currently
attempting to set aside a suitable day to install the interface on site.
In the meantime ferrite beads etc have been fitted where appropriate to the CCTV system and as I type (I hope I don’t speak to soon) the
background noise is greatly reduced.

73,
Geoff, G8DZJ.

Following the failure of the original (28 years old) colinear aerial and after
that of a 20 month delay, last November 2010 the order for the replacement GB3VT
aerial was placed with Jaybeam and some six weeks later the new aerial was duly
delivered.

Waiting for a suitable break in the recent harsh weather conditions has proven a
bit of a problem.
However, I am now able to confirm the installation of the replacement aerial at
the repeater site has been fully completed and is in use by the repeater
equipment.

73,
Geoff, G8DZJ.

Peter G8NSS went up to recommission GB3MR today and he fixed GB3MN while he was up there.

Both repeaters appear to working quite well now.

GB3MN was very busy late afternoon and early evening with mainly mobiles and some fixed stations. They all commented on the great improvement in the performance of GB3MN.

Hopefully all is now well.

Stephen Roberts – M0SJR

Secretary: UKFM Group (Western)

A Date has been set for next years AGM.

Date: Monday 5th September 2011

Location:  

Warrington ARC Radio Room, 

c/o Grappenhall Community Centre, Bellhouse Lane, Grappenhall, Warrington.

The receiver and the logic have been removed from site and are currently under test, but because it’s an intermittent fault, it’s not proving that easy to pin point the problem.

I hope to have some more news in a day or so.

Please bear with us – we hope to have MR back soon.

In the meantime there are 16 other repeaters to go at, 1 on 6M, 4 on 2M, 10 on 70cms and 1 on 23cms.

Best 73

Dave, M0OBW

Chairman, UKFM Group (Western)