147.36 Power Supply Damage
I finally had a chance to open up the 147.36 repeater’s power supply that failed a couple of weeks ago and didn’t have to look far for the reason of the failure. The cause is still undetermined but the damage is easy to spot. The power supply was still functioning and could support the repeater however when the link radio and UHF amp were brought up it couldn’t handle it. ~K4NHA
2016 Jackson County Fair
The annual Jackson County Fair is coming up, September 6th through the 10th at the VFW Fairgrounds in Scottsboro Alabama. Be sure to come by our booth and check out what’s happening in Amateur Radio and Emergency Communications! If you are interested in becoming a HAM we’ll have all the materials necessary to help you get your license and get on the air! Check out our Get Licensed! page for more details and enjoy some pictures from last year.
ARES Meeting – July 28, 2016
ARES Meetings are held on the fourth Thursday of each month at 6:00pm at the EMA Emergency Operations Center in the Jackson County Courthouse basement. All HAMs and persons interested in Emergency Communications are invited to attend.
K4MCL Tower Takedown
Several members gathered to takedown at tower that will soon be installed at it’s new home, Craig K4MCL’s house. As always the star of the day was the climber, KK4UWF Brad Ivey. In attendance were KK4UWF Brad and his daughter Marley, K4MCL Craig, K4FUZ Paul, KB4RMA Richard, and K4NHA Brad.
Click on an image to see a larger version.
Alabama #1 in ARES Activity – 2015 Simulated Emergency Test
2015’s Simulated Emergency Test (SET) was a great success for JCAR, it was the first time Jackson County has been involved in the annual exercise. Jackson County paired with Madison County for a simulated train wreck. The exercise went very well and was a great learning experience and a ton of fun. Our combined counties finished 4th in overall ARES Activity and 3rd in Section/Local Nets. The totals are below (from July QST):
Section Totals
Alabama – 8833 points – Top Spot in ARES Activity
Alabama – 2766 points – 3rd in Section Local Nets
County Totals
Jackson, Madison Co. – 921 points – 4th in ARES Activity
Jackson, Madison Co. – 431 points – 3rd in Local Nets
Great work and a huge thank you to everyone that participated! Lets get ready for this year’s SET Exercise!
Duplexer Repairs at the .90 Site
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.
KK4UWF Tower Install
This time it was KK4UWF’s turn to build a tower. A few members turned out and the tower went up without much problem thanks to a specialized tower tool KK4UWF built.
