2-meter Repeater Issues (Resolved)
November Resolution: We determined that the source of all the problems we were having was a PTZ camera that was installed on the water tower in August. The camera has been removed which put us back at our original equipment setup. The interference has been completely removed at this time.
September 10th Update: The receiver desensitizing issue has returned. We are back at it trying to find out what is going on. We will update you here as to the status as we learn more.
September 5th Update: We have discovered what the issue was and the receive issues seem to have gone away. We discovered two problems:
- First, a digital advertisement sign, highway-sized, just down the road a sign was experiencing major spurious emissions directly on our repeater input of 147.700 along with other frequencies from 144-162 MHz, including the NOAA weather bands. This was the sign creating spurious emissions. We want to thank iHeartCommunications, Inc./iHeart Radio for accepting our report and jumping on this problem very quickly once we identified and reported it.
- Second, some waterproofing material used on top of the water tower was causing RF reflection and desensitizing the repeater’s receiver when in use.
Thank you to the HurstARC team that worked very hard to find it. They ran nets, purchased equipment, ran surveys, etc. on their own time and money which led to us finding the problem(s). Go forth and utilize the repeater once again.
TCC Water Tower
August 5th Original Information Release: Dear Club family, friends, and all other users of our repeater, thank you for notifying us of some repeater issues we are having on our 147.100 machine. We are trying to figure out what exactly happened recently to cause us reception issues.
We have spent some time out at the repeater site doing inspections and testing all of the equipment. We will find out what the problem is shortly and we ask that you not abandon us. Whether it is an antenna issue, coax issue, or maybe even something with the repeater itself, we’re gonna figure it out.
We will update this post once we finally figure out what is happening. Thank you for the reports and thank everyone who uses our 2m repeater. You are all welcome still.
Please let us know if you have problems going forward by emailing us at [email protected]