W3AHS/R Williamsport, PA Amateur Radio Repeater 147.300/147.900 Technical Info Website

Here You Will Find Some Technical Info About The W3AHS Repeater as You Scroll Down!

Click Here To go to My Main Page!! With Lots of Local Stuff

Click Here for the Atomic Clock "The Official Time For the United States"

April 2004- Brand New Kenwood TK-762 Repeater (2 mobiles) With CAT-300 Controller was installed.

---------------------------------------------- Enhanced Receiver...

N3MFJ and KB3AWQ have been doing some work to get the receiver beefed up a little. Some things that have been tried are using a preamp and 2 antennas with the duplexers in line. As of March 20, 2004 we now are using 2 Diamond x50a antennas, The transmit one is just above the roof on a seperate mast right next to the other mast while the receive antenna is where it has been. BAsed on the tests we did on the 20th it was quite impressive. I used my 350 milliwatt HT most of the way to Quiggleville which is just under 2 miles out 973 west. I was able to talk on it in the driveway up there at my parents house. This is something that never has been able to happen before. Before it was luck to be able to be heard in Hepburn Township near Agway with a 5 watt HT. We have a Mirage preamp. The transmit signal coming from the repeater may be different than what your used to hearing because it is lower a few feet but there shouldnt be much difference. Give it a try and lets us know how its doing from where ever you are.

East End Remote Receiver...

NOT IN USE CURRENTLY The Remote Receiver is nothing more than a crossbander. It is set on 147.900 and the PL to access it is 71.9 hertz. If you have an extra memory channel just put it in your radio and set it up just as the repeater output 147.300 151.4 and rpt input 147.900 PL 71.9. Hopefully you dont have to take out the actual repeater PL itself to use the remote but if your out of memory channels I guess ya gotta do what you gotta do... This was done on Saturday September 21, 2002 and is located at Bill, N3MFJ's house (Hepburn St. and Huffman St. Williamsport) currently hooked to his J-Pole and I must say it works fantasticly! Now you will ask how we get it from your signal from Bills house to the High School 300 repeater? Well we have a UHF simplex frequency transmitting from the crossbander receiving up at the high school on the GM-300 link radio. For the Remote to work the link receive only mode must be on. Also you may get into the repeater better and not receive it as well especially if your in the fringes. Transmit coverage is the same its just the receive coverage that you will find is improved by using PL 71.9 any questions contact one of the control operators, also if the link is active the crossband will not allow access to the link, since the link radio is receiving you it cannot re-transmit you back out through the link. It will just put you back out on the 147.300 repeater.

Link Operation....

The link was finished and installed early Tuesday morning May 21, 2002. As of right now the primary link frequency will be (444.700 Repeater in State College) repeater when the link is active If you hear "dit dit" which most of the time you probably will this means the 300 repeater is in link receive only mode so it will monitor the UHF side of the link radio. If you hear just 1 dit it means the link is active going both ways. We use a Motorola GM-300 UHF radio for the link radio to do linking with repeaters. We have had some ideas as well as offers and some of those were to link to the 146.925 Laporte, 443.050 Williamsport which is also hooked to the 147.090 in Williamsport currently, which may be linked to a few others depending on how things work out, possibly up north to Wellsboro as well. We have an 11 element 440 beam for the link antenna as well as a 20 amp Astron power supply that was obtained at Timonium Hamfest. The Beam was installed on May 18, 2002. Although we are currently using the repeater antenna (Diamond dualband X50A). The repeater antenna has actually done better being an omi-directional antenna than the beam for the link so for now at least we will be using a Diamond duplexer to use both the repeater and link radio off one antenna. The Comm Spec ID-8 was installed on June 9, 2002 to ID the link radio. In CW it says KB3AWQ/L. It will ID every 7 minutes when there is activity on the repeater when the link is active. When the link is dropped, obviously it will ID 1 final time within that 7 minute time frame on the link frequency. Also if someone is talking on the the link frequency or repeater as it will most likely be on it will transmit over them so if u hear something like a double or a complete over ride in CW that is probably what your hearing. For instance of you are on the link talking and the link is active and its time for the link radio to ID and whoever is still talking on the link it will transmit the CW over them but depending on your signal, you may over ride it but compared to where the link is and where 300 repeater link radio is it may be tough since the link radio puts out 25 watts. At most a few seconds of a transmission could be missed.

The link is only a part-time link so we do not tie up a bunch of repeaters that is not needed to be tied up. There may be exceptions but at least when there is rag chewing on our repeater it would make most sense to drop the link so whatever repeater is linked ie: State College isnt being tied up. As far as codes go one code turns the link on, another turns the link off and another puts the repeater in link receive only mode which you will find a lot of times the link receive only is active. Link receive only simply lets 147.300 repeater listen to and re-transmit the activity from the link radio on to the repeater. So you may hear another repeater being put out on 147.300. If someone is on the link talking just simply key up and talk.. If they are on the link side you will be able to use the repeater without interfering with the link stuff, remember its in the link receive only mode. Also remember when you have the link up please use it with courtesy, if you can get away with talking on a single repeater or even simplex this is the best amateur radio practice. Reason being if the repeater your using has a link to a repeater that is linked to more than one repeater then there will be multiple repeaters being tied up.

Here is a little about the W3AHS/R... Anything regarding the Uniden Force ARU-351 is not the Kenwood TK 762 repeater as that is the new set up. I will leave it on here though as a reference. The Kenwoods are brand new so no more crystals the squelch sensitivity is still the same.

The name of the repeater is a Uniden Force Commercial Repeater model ARU351. The present Antenna is a Dual Band Diamond X50A (a 3/4 wave c-load 4.5 db gain on VHF/if it matters 5/8 wave 3 element c-load 7.2 db gain on UHF) that was hooked up early in the morning of April 4, 2002. We were having terrible crackling and a static noise with the "former" Comet CA-ABC-22A that was up there which we used from day one (4 months). We had some strong wind storms around the time when this started to occur. Did some tests and sure enough it was the antenna. It has several different connections on it. Did find some loose screws and possibly some other potential problems. The Diamond is a one solid stick (Fiberglass) so there shouldnt be anything to go loose on that. Very well built. As you will see below on 12/31/03 I tested the RF power because it didnt seem as if it was doing as well as it could transmitting and the Radio Shack meter I have said about a watt but being analog its not as accurate as a bird watt meter of course. So I pulled the repeater off the air on the evening of 1/4/04 and took it over to Bill's Electronics the next day and come to find it was putting out 200 milliwatts which actually with knowing this, the repeater wasnt doing too bad. The problem was a power transistor so with the troubles of ordering it etc it took a week and was put in on 1/13/04 and then found that the driver was weak because after the power transistor was replaced it would only put out 10 watts. So it just so happens a Uniden ARU 350 35 watt mobile I believe is the model became available (actually 2 of them) and they have the same RF deck as the repeater so I decided to just go ahead and have that put in since it had some other ajustments that could help out with the problem of the final. Well now for the good news! It is working better than ever!! I receive it better now than when it was put up on the 1st day. There has been some wondering if it didnt have problems right after the install and just kind of dwindled from there. Its seems odd because Bill's Electronics checked the whole thing and made sure everything was just right but I guess things can happen mysteriously. I can hear it walking from my car all the way in my house and up to my bedroom now and I was never able to hear it in the house before. Actually I had to be in the right spots in the yard just to pick it out. Also I get it full scale on the mobile all the way to my house and I can even hear the repeater on the HT all the way home too! Such excitement since its never done so well before. I was lucky to hear it on 973 west before on the mobile. Now we get it full scale all the way to Quiggleville (Cogan Station about 10 miles north of Williamsport.)

The power output is currently set at 30 Watts (25 watts out of duplexors) (capable of 50 watts).

The duplexers were made originally by Don Godfrey K3QFW. (the same as in QST from a July 1972 issue)

Some info about how the coordination finally happened....

I had requested the frequency pair of 147.300/147.900 on July 16, 2001 which was the date I sent in the coordination forms. On December 17, 2001 I received an email saying that as of December 17, 2001 We had been approved, since Smethport is still off the air and it seems that they didnt have much of a choice because of the length of time they have been off the air as well as the limited grace period to get it back on the air but dont quote me on that decision, that is just the ways it seems as an opinion.

1st Day of operation was...

The repeater has been on the air since the afternoon of December 2, 2001 at the Williamsport Area High School on top of "C" Pod Roof "Penthouse" Storage Room.

On February 9, 2002 I received the official Coordination Certificate in the mail. So its official and you can feel welcome to use it. Be sure to enter a new memory channel in your radio and add 147.300+ PL of 151.4 hz.

Some info on the grounding....

The grounding of the equipment and the mast is hooked into the grounding of the building. The equipment has a Alpha Delta Lighting Arrestor hooked up right before the duplexers which should help protect the duplexers and repeater, I believe this has a total db loss of .1. For more specs on the Lighting Arrestor check in AES under Alpha Delta the $50 version. There is also a power surge protector on the equipment as well going to the outlet.

Emergency Power Status....

At this time there is no emergency power known to us at least unless the outlets are hooked to the emergency generator with the emergency lighting which I am pretty sure they arent.

Feedline and the run to the Antenna and the loss as well as SWR reading....

Also currently using Cellwave Half Inch Hardline with an SWR of 1.1:1 and approx. a 40 foot run to the Diamond antenna. Half Inch Hardline Installed on March 16, 2002.. (Believed to be the shortest repeater hardline run in this area.) Also according to what I have read there is a .47 db loss (at 50 foot) instead of the 2db loss with the 50 foot+ of RG 8 U that we previously used.

This you will need to know in order to use this Repeater...

The PL is 151.4 hz and is on all the time both encode and decode.

Below factory standards as far as sensitive goes...

The Uniden Force ARU-351 is quite sensitive, the squelch is set to .25 microvolts. If I remember correctly the receiver is only supposed to go as low as .30-.35 microvolts. We have found that it usually has a better receive than transmit but it depends on where you are.