The Repeater has had low output power for a couple of months. The reason for this was unknown until Saturday, when SA3BGM, SA3BIB and SG3P made a visit to the site. One connector on the TX cavity was broken, and the filter is now taken down for repair.
The repeater is now running 40 watts output.
Today the lower 40m yagi has been prepared for lift-off. The director has been centered and ropes has been put inside the elements to get rid of the vibrations. Still left in the tower is the cables for the upper antenna. It has to be taken down before it is possible to make the complete stacking cables and matching for the antennas.
We are also planning for a new antenna configuration for the repeater located in Gävle. Right now the repeater has two 6 el yagis for the TX, one north and one SW. After some simulation and considerations we have decided to build 8 small 4 element DK7ZB antennas. We have made a couple of prototypes and the mechanical design is better than the 6 el Vårgårda that we use now. The antennas will be placed 4×4. The final directions are not sure yet, but probably south towards E4 and west towards Riks 80 and Sandviken. In the direction West we have possibilities to put at least two extra receivers.
For the 70cm repeater antenna project we are missing some small pieces of 20x20mm aluminium and the boxes for the driven elements. The stacking will be made of 75ohm cables.
Tomorrow some work on the Ericsson tower will take place. Paint the rotor for the 40m yagi and take down the old 15el CUEDEE 2m antenna and replace it with a omni-duoband antenna for 2m/70cm. This will replace the small 4el yagi used for the repeater RX. We will also have the possibility to inspect how that antenna has been affected by weather after two years in the tower.
Hello SvxLinkers! A new fresh version of SvxLink, 080518, has now been released. The biggest change is internal. Big parts of the audio handling subsystem has been rewritten. This has made it possible to implement a couple of new features and it will be easier to implement new features in the future. Qtel does not change very often but this time I got a patch from Stuart Longland which adds VOX functionality. At the moment it only works if full duplex is enabled under the sound card settings tab. Some of the most important changes in the SvxLink Server are: * Implemented remote TX. The new application "remotetrx" now handle both remote transmitters and receivers. The old application "remoterx" has been removed. * Now possible to use left/right stereo channels as two mono channels. Which channel to use is chosen by the new configuration variable AUDIO_CHANNEL that must be set for RX and TX configuration sections. * Added a signal level based squelch type. Set SQL_DET to SIGLEV to use the new squelch type. Configuration variables SIGLEV_OPEN_THRESH and SIGLEV_CLOSE_THRESH will control at which levels the squelch will open and close. To use this squelch type, the signal level detector must have been calibrated by setting up SIGLEV_SLOPE and SIGLEV_OFFSET. Also, since the detector is not perfect you probably need to set SQL_HANGTIME to a couple of hundred milliseconds. If using a voter, SQL_DELAY might have to be setup to get reliable signal level readings. A value of 40 seem to work fine. * Macros behave a little bit different now. The macro digits are now sent back into the logic core, digit by digit, as though they were received from the DTMF decoder. This mean that all macro commands have to be ended with a number sign to be executed. Make sure you read the ChangeLog (really) for all the details. http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=600206 Enjoy the new release! 73's de SM0SVX / Tobias
Made some updates how to connect to echolink stations via the repeater.
Winner of this years prize for Most customer friendly HAM Radio supplier goes to Sanco and SM2IRZ in Umeå. To make sure we received the right products, he sent his entire stock for us to choose from. We needed crystals for our old TEKK KS-900 packet radio transceivers, and Sune is always the guy to call. The radio will be used for a high speed packet radio connection from our Repeater to internet. This will be used for upgrades of the SvxLink software, and maybe some other fun stuff. Who said Packet Radio was dead?
Friday afternoon our Repeater team gathered at Stureborg, to complete step two in our three step rocket.
Antennas were changed to two pairs of 6 element Vårgårda. The directions are North, beaming over E4 and Gävle City, and South-West beaming towards Österfärnebo/Hedesunda. One pair of antennas for RX 70 meters high and the other pair for TX at 62 meter. We also mounted a small dipole at 51 meter for the Packet Radio TX antenna.
Some minor changes was made on the software by Tobias.
Tests were made with Dan SA3ARK and Tommy SM3OSM in Storvik. Signal levels were good, and Tommy was able to use milliWatts from Storvik to reach the repeater. We also put a RX Multiplexer between the RX filter and the receiver. The Multiplexer has some extra gain, and the tests showed that it improved a lot. We also experienced some interference from the TX, probably due to low quality cables between Filter and feeder cables, or our filters are not good enough.
Drive tests show a coverage from Månkarbo (E4 south) to Tönnebro (E4 north). Our drivetest team consisted of SM3EVR, SM0SVX, SM3XIK and SG3P.
More information at the SK3GK Forum.
Under veckan har Repeatern SK3GW flyttats från Anders/XIKs QTH i Stigslund, Gävle, till Stureborgsmasten som ligger i närheten av Gävle Bro. Repeatern drivs av XIK, OSM, SVX och SGP och under flera år varit aktiv från Anders QTH. Varje gång det varit dags för 70cm NAC, har anders fått klättra upp på taket och skifta om antennerna för att kunna köra. Nu går det äntligen att montera fasta antenner för Contest.
Repeatern är främst för att testa och använda SvxLink, en egenhändigt skriven mjukvara för Linux av SM0SVX Tobias. SvxLink är mest känt för att vara den främsta Echolink mjukvaran för Linux, men den har mycket mer än så. Bland annat en komplett repeater logik. Varför köpa eller bygga en specifik repeaterlogik, nu när SvxLink finns? En enkel dator med ljudkort är allt som behövs, sen är det bara att installera.
Repeatern har ännu inte fått sina riktiga antenner, men verkar ha ganska bra räckvidd ändå. Läs mer på den specifika Repeater sidan här ovan.
