After many days and hours of work, the SEMARA 224.800 repeater is now back on the air and interfaced to a new repeater controller. It has the ability to link via IRLP, EchoLink and RF through a remotely selectable 16-channel UHF radio. It is mainly parked on the New England Network (IRLP 9120 / EchoLink 9129 *NEW-ENG*), in which the Quahog Repeater Network based in Rhode Island is also linked most of the time.
The SEMARA 927.8375 repeater’s IRLP node is now back up and running. It is once again parked on New England Amateur Radio 900 MHz Network or “NEAR-900” (IRLP 9125). The repeater controller for this repeater was left in place, due to the fact that using the IRLP node itself as a repeater controller isn’t reliable. This means that all three SEMARA repeaters are now using their own SCOM 7330 repeater controllers and each repeater also has its own IRLP node. Keep in mind that the fans in this repeater still need to be replaced, in which I need to get together with Jeff-N1ZZN to swap them out.
The 147.000 EchoIRLP node had apparently froze a few weeks ago. Joey-KC1FWN had brought this to my attention last week. The node was rebooted this morning and it successfully began working again.
Looking to the future, the 900 fan swapping and mounting of the 220 equipment in the 2m rack are the next tasks to tackle. The equipment doesn’t look at all impressive right now sitting around at the repeater site unmounted. I start a new job tomorrow and my time will be limited, however most of the heavy work has been finished. Eventually, a dedicated 220 antenna will also need to be mounted at the top of our tower as I had previously mentioned. The 220 repeater is temporarily using the 220 section of a tri-band antenna (a Comet CX-333) which is less than ideal. I recommend that the club looks into buying a 4-dipole array antenna next year and plans a hardline/antenna install around the summer of 2017 through NETCOM’s maintenance window in our agreement with them. At some point at a future meeting going into 2017, I will try to be present to talk about this and to make a motion to do so.
Thanks for your patience and enjoy your 2m, 220 and 900 SEMARA repeaters!
73,
Richard J. Cabral, W1RJC
SEMARA Repeater Committee