Isaac and I are done with hamf…
August 8th, 2009Isaac and I are done with hamfest. Daddy walk away with a new toy, I finally got my own servicemonitor, now I just need to figure how to use
Isaac and I are done with hamfest. Daddy walk away with a new toy, I finally got my own servicemonitor, now I just need to figure how to use
@wa7nwp what are you doing to weatherize it?
I think the big preschool visit was a success. Isaac was a little unsure at first, but by the time we left he didn’t want to go.
Tomorrow is big test drive of Isaac maybe preschool, really hoping he doesn’t melt down. I know he’ll like it if he just doesn’t freak.
So I’m a little behind with the updates, I’ll blame it on the vacation mode I’m in right now. (I’ve now been back to work for a week and I’m still way behind, hence why I started this over a week ago and it is just now getting published) Rewinding a couple weeks, I was having dinner with most of the MicroHAMs board of directors and I asked the question about when Scott’s D-Star repeater was going up? This turned into a Q&A about when enough of us could make the trip up to the repeater site and actually help with the install.
So last Thursday a group of us met up in the foggy morning at the Maltby Cafe in Snohomish. After filling up on very yummy bread and other breakfast goodies, we doubled back to Scott’s house to shuffle cars and pick up the actual repeater. From there it was out Hwy 9 to the Mountain Loop Hwy and up the not quite horrible access road to repeater site.
The morning weather wasn’t very promising, it had actually tried to rain on me a couple times during the drive north. This was odd, since it had been in the high eighties for nearly two weeks, but Murphy does what Murphy wants, so we got to deal with a misty morning. As we climbed the access road, we actually ‘drove’ into the clouds. I’m talking slow down even more and turn on the lights because I can’t see type clouds. We actually missed the drive way on the first pass and had to double back.
For most of us, it was our first time at the site and we did the required walk around to get a feel for it. For those that are not familiar with such things, this is a radio site where equipment from various groups is placed. The site is chosen because it is located up high (line of site) and is still accessible via cars/trucks. Most of the groups are local or state government and the equipment provides a radio link between different members of the served agencies. This particular site is interesting because it has no power service, the whole site is run off diesel generators. (and also spends most of the winter under several feet of snow)
Scott divided us into three groups. One group was responsible for getting the radio equipment installed in the building, the second group needed to install the new antenna and the third was suppose to stand around watching the rest of work.(OK, Scott didn’t actually call out the third group, but it sort of seemed that way sometimes)
I’m not sure exactly why, but I ended up in the antenna group. I have a feeling this keeps happening to me because I have my own climbing gear (notice fancy harness in pictures ) and I’m also one of the few members of the group who isn’t afraid of heights. This was all fine with me, but I did get a little wonky because of the plan for how to install the antenna. It seems Scott had originally thought the mounting brackets which came with the antenna would work. But after actually looking at the tower, it was obvious we were going to have to engineer something on the spot. The radio engineer who maintains the site for the county gave us a piece of electrical conduit, I dug through a bunch of boxes to find some bolts and then headed up the tower to figure something out.
Luckily once on the tower, I found one set of holes which was in the right spot and after dragging Art up to help hold everything in place, I was able to drill the another set of holes. At that point we got the conduit attached to the tower and then came the fun of getting the antenna installed. The antenna has to have the feedline run through this mounting tube, before you can attach it to the brackets. Of course everything has to be put together before it goes into the bracket. The mounting bracket is of course located high enough that I can just barely reach it from the top spot on the tower. I finally manage to jimmy everything into place and then I couldn’t make the mounting screws fit. After trying for long enough that holding my arms over my head hurt, I gave up and pulled the whole thing down to figure it out. (For those familiar with the Comit antennas, you’ll know all I had todo was turn the antenna 180 degrees to make it work) After figuring out the problem, everything goes back up and this time went together pretty quickly.
At this point all I had to-do was lower my tools and attach the coax to the tower with a bunch of zip ties. All of this actually took about 15 minutes and I was off the tower wondering when we could fire up the repeater. This is when things started to get interesting. Scott had never actually full ‘tested’ the repeater when it was located at his house. This part called the duplexer basically wasn’t tuned correctly, so instead of getting about 18 watts out of the radio, we were getting about 4 watts. After double checking everything and making sure it was the duplexer Scot made the executive decision to bail and come back another day with a replacement.
The rest of the day was spent packing everything up, policing the area for tools and other stuff before driving off the mountain. We all were at this point hunger, since it took about two hours longer then expected to install everything. We found this interesting “Italian” place, which actually had a number of really good Greek dishes and ate lunch.
NOTE: Since my son dropped my camera into the sand during our vacation, I didn’t take any pictures myself. So I swipped some for JD (N8JD) and posted them here. Thanks JD!
I am a geek. Night!
Just realized that it is dark outside, been sitting on deck with laptop for the last hour waiting for my family to get back from the park.
I’ve cleaned the windows in the shack, completed the disassemble and now started reassembling the shack, mowed the weeds and posted to blog.
@wa7nwp love the pic!
@leolaporte but where is the first episode?