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 From
our home in Northam, Western Australia I have access to only one repeater, VK6RAV a
simple converted Philips FM880 2mtr
band device located on Crowsnest
Hill about 10km out of town. Ever since I have resided in Northam
this has been my main access to amateur radio. Unfortunately the
repeater suffers from periods of an odd RF feedback that holds the
repeater open until it times out and produces a very annoying
howling sound.
The repeater has good coverage of the
Avon
Valley
including Northam and a half dozen other towns and is an important
link for the sparsely scattered amateur community. But this
intermittent fault means that it is often unpleasant to monitor the
repeater when it throws one of its wobbles which can last for days,
resulting in little activity on the device.
My first VK6RAV
contact was shortly after moving to Northam, I was driving when I
heard someone calling on the repeater on my Icon IC-W2A on the floor
of the car. I quickly stopped the car and put out a call. The
response came back VK3YE train mobile near Northam. My first contact
was Peter Parker (VK3YE). I chatted with Peter for about twenty
minutes as his train passed through the
Avon
Valley
on route to
Perth
. It is a small world!
My first local contact was Jim (VK6CA) shortly after the Peter
Parker contact. I was later
invited by Jim to attend a repeater working bee on June 7, 2008 with
the aim of replacing the antenna as this was the only part of the
repeater installation that had not been attended to as a means to
resolving the fault.
This job required at least six people to manage the guy wires and mast
winch for the antenna mast lowering, we had eight of the local
amateurs there on the day.
I was there in a heat-beat as this was a great opportunity to meet
some/most of the hams from the
Avon
Valley
area.
The job was also fun as I did get to climb the tower and feel like I was
contributing a bit to my new community.
While the antenna replacement was a bit of a long shot we gained some
confidence when we found corrosion and oxidization in the antenna
and antenna connection. The N connector at the antenna end of the
coax rotated freely, not a sign of a good connection. The theory was
that perhaps a strong local broadcast of similar signal was
producing harmonics and or inter-mods within the connections and was
then somehow affecting the repeater. What ever it was it was very
marginal and very intermittent, the worst kind of fault.
Typically while the work went relatively smoothly it took a bit longer
than anticipated and the tower was finally wound back into position
well into the dark.
Unfortunately the antenna replace has not fixed the problem. We had about
four days of faultless operation and then for about an hour on one
afternoon the fault returned. It was always a long shot and its now
back to the old drawing board!
There is antidotal evidence from Barrie (VK6ADI) that the repeaters
coverage has been improved as he has noted that a number of weak
coverage spots are now workable, so the work was not a complete
loss.
Repeater details if you are in this part of the world are;
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Input
|
Output
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Callsign
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Location
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Coverage Area
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Output
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HASL
|
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147.875
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147.275
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VK6RAV
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Crowsnest Hill
|
Avon
Valley
|
20
|
274
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This site is
about 10 km North East of Northam, which is about 80 km East of
Perth. The site is located on a wheat farming property on a small
hill known as Crowsnest Hill about 90m above the average terrain.
The VK6RAV is
operated by the West Australia Repeater Group. http://www.warg.org.au
See
current operational details of local repeater VK6RAV.
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