Christmas Mountain Recon Trip

12 Aug 2017
Repair Trip – Site Went Down During Storm
W5ATO – N5HYD
  • D.C. SYSTEM:
    • Lightning damagr.
    • No LED indications on Sunsaver SS-20L-12V #08151515 Charge Controller. Unit later showed failure of open circuit during continuity test of points 3 to 1 to 5. These are the negative terminals points and should all show continuity to each other. Replaced with Sunsaver ss-20L012V #09499269?
    • 2 or 3 solar panels fried. Only had time to remove all but one working panel from system. 1.7 amps into 4.0 VDC
    • Batteries at 4.0 Vdc. Up to 4.5 or so after hooking up one panel.
  • LOCAL REPEATER:
    • Replace multiple adapters at Duplexer to antenna coax junction with a UHF-F to N-M.
  • SITE:
    • Posted license.
    • Left with batteries slowly charging and hoping the site may come on-line while we lick our wounds.

Repeater Maintenance / Repair at Elephant Mountain

13 May 2017
Repair trip
N5HYD

Short info:
1: A.C. to D.C. power issue found. Did a short-term repair.
2: 147.020 Local Repeater now back on-line, unless the noise returns.
3: I may have fixed the Weather Alert receiver. Also fixed an issue where I forgot to include the Presidio are alarms in the decode list.
Long info:
• HUB REPEATER:
o Hub Repeater had a strange ‘square wave’ sounding noise that started shortly after the system was in use, and slowly became more pronounced as it went.
Temporary swap to a spare Hub Repeater showed no change.
Problem immediately went away when I turned off the A.C. to D.C. switching power supply and bypassed the A.C. surge protection.
Decided to leave the Hub Repeater as-is.

• LOCAL REPEATER:
o Was in disable due to the TX interfering with the RX. I’m hoping it may be related to the D.C. power interference issue noted below.
Enabled Local Repeater.

• POWER SYSTEM:
o ‘Square wave’ noise on Hub Repeater went away just as soon as I unplugged the Power System from the A.C. socket on the wall.
Removed rack mounted A.C. surge protection.
Removed A.C. to D.C. switching power supply. Replaced with a small (15 amp) supply that was left on-site.
o Tested two DEKA 12AVR-145LLPS backup batteries with test set. 60%.

• RLC-4 CONTROLLER:
o #0208 causes rogue “ERR” code in CW somewhere in the system.
Toned: #0059 76 0 to maybe disable “ERR” code in system.

• WEATHER RECEIVER:
o Presidio area alarms not being decoded.
Discovered that I had forgotten to enable them the last time I uploaded the personality
Enabled Presidio area alarms and uploaded the changed personality in the Weather Receiver.

o Possible drop-out during audio portion of weekly test.
Tried to use computer-Icom IC-92 test system that worked at the house on my desktop WX radio.
Unable to get it to work. I may need to actually send the tone audio to a TP-1 on the motherboard but was unable to find TP-1.
Decided to save issue for another day.

o DATA:
Default codes: 012099, 012011, 012025, 012086.
K5FD codes: 048043, 048243, 048377

Repair trip, Elephant Mountain

N5NYM, W5ATO, N5HYD

SITE:  Vacuum

TOWER:  Static on VHF on occasion. Added temporary rubber to top of south guy wire.

WEATHER RADIO:

  • Reset to default personality using SW#4 and power cycle. Tried to use laptop speakers into a handheld to fake a weekly test but was unable to get it to work
  • Electrically erased personality in radio (via SW#4). Reloaded personality stored in my laptop.
  • We’ll wait until next Wednesday to see if it will work.

LOCAL REPEATER:

  • Unable to align duplexers.
  • Left repeater turned off.
  • Removed duplexers to bench test

146.920- Glass Mountain/ Ft Stockton Repair

Repair Trip – BBARC Link (Port #4) not up. Unable to bring it up remotely.
N5NYM – WA5ATO – N5HYD
>LINK #4 (BBARC) LINK RADIO: Not working.
>RLC-4 controller, Port #4 (BBARC LINK) showing constant RX and COR. This means the RLC-4 controller has decided Port #4 has locked up in receive, so has held the port inactive.
>No PTT vial local microphone.
>We decided that Link #4 Link Radio Motorola CDM750 #103TBU8993 may be defective.
>Swapped programming frequencies with Link #2 (WINK LINK ) radio.
>Swapped this radio with LINK #2 (WINK LINK) radio.

>LINK #2 (WINK) LINK RADIO: Swapped programming frequencies with LINK #4 (BBARC LINK ) radio.
>Swapped this radio with LINK #4 (BBARC LINK) radio.