The Galway Fusion Repeater Active from Loughrea Co. Galway

On Saturday the 13th of June The Galway Repeater, EI2TBR, was installed on site at Knockroe, Loughrea Co Galway. Aengus, EI4ABB, had prepared the repeater and tuned the cavities before transporting the equipment to the hill. The Repeater was switched on early in the afternoon. The input frequency is 145.025 MHz  and the output is 145.625 MHz. CTCss tones of 77Hz are required to access the analog side. 77Hz tones are also transmitted to open the squelch on an analog radio.

There was no convenient road to the site so the equipment was loaded onto a quad bike which was just about the right size to tranport the equipment to the top of the hill. Des EI5GT is pictured next to the Quad bike.

The antennas had been placed on the tower last March but our attempts to put up the equipment were thwarted initially by weather and then by the introduction of "lockdown" due the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The equipment was driven up the steep hil and off-loaded into the hut which houses the local wireless internet services.  Enda EI2II was preparing the Hut for the installation.

The antenna feeders were already in place and it was easy to install the repeater into the rack system provided. There will be  plenty of space for the UHF DMR repeater in the same rack.

The antenna was a perfect match and it was necessary for Aengus to fine tune the Bandpass/Band Reject Cavity filters. This is a delicate operation as it prevents the transmitted signal from desensitizing the receiver. Aengus is able to do this remarkably quickly on site with a small signal generator that transmits a very weak signal on the input and output frequencies.

The Repeater powered up straight away with no problems. Initial reports were good with the furthest coming from Castlebar Co. Mayo.

The site has an impressive view in all directions although slightly shielded to the South-South-West. As the day continued, calls were received from Inishbofin Island, Galway, Ballinasloe, the Limerick direction, Woodcock Hill, Westport, and we even had a S2 report from Kildare. This would be borne out by the predicted coverage map below. Unfortunately the road map only show coverage extending to 150 Km whereas the satellite map shows coverage extending to a maximum of 250 Km.

There are numerous places where a little bit elevation will allow a station to get in. The maps are based on mobile coverage so base station access would be able to get in from the yellow shaded areas.

The Repeater has EchoLink attached to the Analog side and Wires-X on C4FM. The Wires-X is fed remotely to the site from Galway City. It will be interesting to see how the Wires-X works over the next few months.

The repeater was funded by a joint effort between the Galway Radio Club and the Galway VHF Group plus some amateurs from the Mayo area  and was suppied by John MI0AAZ.

We thank Des, EI5GT, and Enda EI2II for the kind assistance with placement of the antennas and the accomodation of equipment on their site. This has widened the coverage area on 2 metres and will surely gather more interest over time.