Installing the 70cms Repeater at Knockroe

A meeting prior to the installation ensured that all parts had been purchased and also who currently had them in their possession. The last item required was the 20ft pole. John looked after the purchase and delivery of the pole to the site.

Gerry took charge of the guying equipment and all of the necessary parts were handed to him. Andrew took charge of the fencing materials and the parts for the fourth guy which needed to be set in the ground on the day.

Steve held the repeater, sundry items and spares should they be required.

The group met in Abbeyknockmoy and headed for the site. Marlow joined us and oversaw the operation on his site.

The first task was to work on the brackets to hold the pole against the wall of the hut. Gerry took charge of this with the assistance of Arek.  

The next task was to organise the staying point for the fourth guy. Joe and Andrew looked after this duty. A fair bit of digging was involved until a huge lump of rock was found. 

This rock was going nowhere so the best course of action was to drill into the rock and insert a rawl bolt. This has a couple of small clamps added and the fourth guy was affixed to this. Concrete and rocks were poured over this and then the rest of the earth covered it. A small fence was built around this area to prevent cattle damaging the guy and staying point.

The pole was raised to ascertain the length of the steel guys and also the fourth guy which would have been longer. Once this was done it was time to bolt the antennas to the pole. 

The raising of the mast was not too difficult with a little muscle and weight behind the mast

Gerry spent much of the time on the roof of the hut ensuring that the guys were secure. The tensioners did not need adjustment so there will be plenty of play to tighten them in the event of the guys stretching.

And so the last of the guys were attached and secured to the Rawl Bolt on the rock. With all in place it was time to look upward and see the results of the work done.

And then into the hut where John had been working on the installation of the Repeater and the APRS Digipeater.

A great day was enjoyed by all. The installation took four hours to complete. A great days work was done by all with special thanks to the Team - John EI1EM. Tom EI2GP, Joe EI3IX, Steve EI5DD, Andrew EI3FEB, Gerry EI8DRB, and Arek EI9GWB and not forgetting Martin List-Petersen who oversaw the operation and took the photographs shown here.

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Galway 70cm Repeater - EI7AKR

The Galway VHF Group 70 cms Repeater is now located at its permanent home on Knockroe, Abbeknockmoy, Co. Galway. This is a prime site with a superb and unimpeded view in all directions. Initial predictions using Radio-Mobile show a pretty uniform coverage of the County of Galway in almost all directions. 

As can be seen below, the coverage is impressive. This will facilitate many operators who just can not experiment with communication over distance using UHF Radio. The primary objective is to give saturation coverage of the County and, more importantly, the main routes into and out of Galway City. Regrettably, this is not possible in the direction of Clifden due to the proximity of the 12 Pins and Maamturks, however, coverage into Oughterard, and just beyond, is possible. Whilst predicted coverage is impressive, the actual mobile coverage may bring in even more surprises.

The Individual components of the Repeater are as follows

The repeater is fabricated from a modified Commercial Kyodo UHF Repeater unit running 40 Watts fed into a 4 stacked dipole array with an actual gain of 6dB. Naturally, ultra-low loss coax feeder will be used. The repeater was supplied by WESCOM and modified by Enda O'Brien EI5GMB.

To achieve the isolation between transmit and receive it is necessary to insert a bandpass/band-reject filter in line. This is one area where compromise is not an option. A set of six Sinclair cavity filters were purchased. Expensive but perfect for the job. Careful tuning using a spectrum analyser and/or a VNA was required to achieve the best possible rejection. The specification suggested that there would be 120dB of isolation between the receive and transmit frequency and we were using a 7.6MHz split.

Ideally, the cavity filter needs to be tuned into the feeder and antenna in use on-site. Although the cavity filter can be tuned into a 50 Ohm load, it will be necessary to tweak it up on site. If one changes the antenna or feeder the whole process of tuning the cavity filters has to be repeated as minor changes to the load will alter the characteristic curves. Shown below are the characteristic curves on the receiver tuned to 432.825MHz. 

We were fortunate that we were able to tune the cavity filters into the correct heliax feeder and antenna system prior to installation on the permanent site. This will reduce the amount of time spent tuning on site. It will probably be necessary to make minor adjustments before leaving the repeater once the installation has been completed.

It is now possible to run 30 watts of power without any worry about desense or drift. With the present power setting, it has been possible to get into the repeater with an S 1 signal received from it whilst it is transmitting 30 watts. This may have to be balanced on-site but at this stage, it may not be necessary. 

There is no noticeable temperature effect causing the cavity to pass or reject bands to drift. We had tried the small Procom type filters which actually heated up when our transmit signal was passed through them. This resulted in the characteristic curves to drift and resulted in desense after a couple of minutes of use. A search on the internet revealed the Sinclair cavity filters. These were by no means cheap but it is far better not to compromise the system for the sake of saving a few Euro. 

An RC-100 Repeater controller deals with the identification and timings of the repeater. The repeater is accessed using a CTCSS tone of 77 Hz as it is considered irresponsible to allow spurious triggering from a carrier operated squelch. Through this controller, the Repeater can be switched off at short notice if required to do so. 

The Antenna is the most important part of the set up.

The antenna system was obtained from Radio Structures Ltd in the UK. It was designed specifically for the task taking into account the Transmit and Receive frequencies. the Gain of the antenna is 5.5dB gain over a 1/2 wave dipole. The antenna is true Omni-directional and the characteristics are shown below. 

There is little point in producing a professional system without a professional antenna fed with low loss coax. In our case, we used Andrews heliax with negligable losses at UHF.

Status - Active

Call sign EI7AKR

Repeater Access by 77 Hz CTCSS Tone

Modulation Narrow FM (+/- 2.5 KHz)

The IRLP Node Number is 5705

The Echolink Node Number  5705

Echolink Node EI7AKR-R

Locator Reference for site IO53PK

 

Output Frequency 430.825 MHz  

Input Frequency 438.425MHz

 Frequency Shift + 7.6 MHz 

Please note Time-out 2.45minutes

Repeater Keeper - Steve Wright EI5DD

Reports to wrights1@eircom.net

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