CCECPSCO News
Gaylord KD8QCC D-STAR Repeater Status
The CCECPSCO's new D-STAR repeater in Gaylord is still experiencing some type of RF receive trouble. A trip back to the site is required to sort out those issues.
This repeater was obtained through the Icom D-STAR repeater promotion. Due to a variety of issues related obtaining access to the originally planned site for this repeater, it has been temporarily located on top of the Alpine Center on the North side of Gaylord. The repeater is installed, available for registration on-line, and is operational. However, there is something severely limiting receive sensitivity to all but very local signals. This may be very local interference on the tower (none was detected in the vicinity of the building) or could be some RF problem with the installation. A trip to the site is being planned to determine the reason for this problem.
A much better long-term site near Waters has been identified and work is underway to obtain access to that site. If that site does accept the repeater, it would provide ideal coverage from as far South as West Branch to well North of Gaylord and significant coverage both East and West of I-75. Updates will be posted here as this project continues.
N8DNX & W8CCCE Repeater Status
The N8DNX and W8CCE (D-STAR) wide coverage UHF repeaters located in Stutsmanville were recently affected by receive problems. Those problems were traced to water intrusion into a Polyphaser transmission line protector at the entrance panel. Corrosion inside the protector caused a fuse to blow at the DC power supply that feeds power to the tower-mounted preamp through the transmission line for these repeaters. It was believed that this water reached the protector due to water that was noticed between the outer jacket and outer shield of the transmission line. The line protector was replaced and changes were made to ensure water from the line could not reach the protector again.
Interestingly, the system suffered an identical failure only one week later. The new protector had corroded so bad in that amount of time that a lead on a resistor used to pass DC around the RF protection circuitry had completely corroded through. It was then noticed that there was an unused CAT5 cable tied back above the protector and that water was slowly dripping from that line directly onto the protector. Apparently these protectors aren't very happy with water dripping on them. The protector was replaced again, and the dripping cable tied out of the way to eliminate the problem. The repeaters have been working flawlessly for several weeks now.
These two repeaters transmit on a single antenna at the 400' level on the tower and use a single receive antenna at the 470' level which directly feeds a high-level low-noise preamp mounted on the tower just below the antenna. This configuration ensures very high repeater sensitivity and minimal transmit power loss. It's because of this configuration that both UHF repeaters lost sensitivity at the same time.