On October 5, I visited the Marshall Manor 146.925 site with Gordon, WW4GW. We needed to replace the controller that was responsible for the intermittent transmitter dropouts, as well as continue to investigate the persistent noises on the output.
The replacement controller is the new Arcom RC210 the club recently purchased which was installed without issue. The way it’s currently programmed has linking disabled by default. Activating net mode will establish the linking with the other 2 club 2 meter repeaters, and deactivating net mode will again disconnect the links. This approach in part is to help us in our ongoing diagnosis of our noise gremlins.
After the controller replacement, we began focusing on the noises which we were able to re-create by injecting a weak signal over the air while shaking guy wires and various hardware in the shack. Correcting one defective ground at one guy wire anchor point seemed to help, but certainly did not correct the noise. We were able to make a significant improvement by improving some grounds in the shack, and by correcting some less than ideal coax and hardline connections.
At least one of these ground changes seemed to make a huge improvement, and the repeater is again back on the upper antenna as desired. With our recent history at this site, it’s difficult to say things are permanently fixed, but please do continue to use the 146.925 since that’s the only way we will really know what improvements we may have accomplished.
Thanks again to Gordon for his time and help, and for the club’s patience.
Bill, N0WP
