Saturday we attempted to tune the duplexer that was currently installed on the 146.90 repeater. For a long time now there was an apparent issue that was severely limiting the amount of power the repeater could run. Ben, K4QF, began tuning and quickly found that one can was completely unresponsive. The issue became apparent once we removed the bottom of the can. The tuning rod had broken loose from the bottom of the tuning tube:
A quick repair was attempted with 2-part epoxy but because of the coating on all the metal inside the can the epoxy wouldn’t hold at all. The duplexer will need to be sent to Telewave for repairs. Not all was lost however and the repeater is now operating on separate transmit and receive antennas running at full power, a 9.5dB gain over the previous power level. Coverage has been drastically improved at this time however coverage may have changed due to the positioning of the receive antenna on the tower. More repairs and tuning will occur in the coming weeks.
