On 5/21/2002, the newly assembled 147.39+ repeater was installed in Clayton and back on the air. This is from the old website...
'WB4IUY repeater in
Clayton, NC. PL 88.5' is the voice
of WB4IUY heard on this
repeater every 10 minutes (when in service). This repeater is sponsored by the Triangle East Amateur
Radio Association (TEARA). The repeater is located on private property, just
south of Clayton near hwy 42 west.
This picture on the right is the
repeater (in the gray and beige enclosure), sitting atop the new repeater
and node enclosure at the Clayton NC site. It is constructed in a RCA series
1000 repeater cabinet, and uses an RCA receiver and exciter strip. The
PA is from a GE MastrII, the power supply is largly homebrew, and the interstage
amplifier (between the exciter and PA) is a modified Aerotron Mpac module.
An ARR GaAsFet receiver preamplifier is installed internally to improve
weak signal performance. The controller is a refurbished SCOM 6K, rebuilt
from parts of two controllers previously destroyed by lightning, and
updated to include a digital delay to help hide squelch bursts. The digital
voice announcers were built by Interalia and have been modified to include
large capacity outboard battery backup. These Interalia units previously
served time in the telephone industry. The repeater has 3 additional dc
blowers installed to keep things cool during long transmissions. Circuitry was
added to include CTCSS encode/decode for linking and interference control.
A motorola UHF Micor was used for remote control and linking via RF.
This is an open repeater, although it may require a sub-audible tone of
88.5 hz for access on occasion. This is necessary to control unintentional
interference generated by commercial sources as well as that which occurs
during band openings.
Several cavity filters are required to maintain control of the repeater and
minimize interference from local hi-powered paging systems and commercial
repeaters, as well as reduce the receiver desense caused by the high levels
of RF from local co-located systems on a local broadcast tower. Some of these
cavity filters are shown in the picture to the left.
This repeater also shares it's feedline
and antenna system with the W4RAL-4 BBS node. This photo shows parts of the
mixing network that was designed to allow the voice repeater on 147.39/99
and a digital node on 145.01 to co-habitate the same site sucessfully.
This repeater replaces the previous
GE MastrPro repeater, described in the link info contained
HERE. Being in a high spot, this
tower is a regular attraction for lightning strikes. The previous repeater
was destroyed by lightning, and this machine has been rebuilt from
the ground up since it's destruction during the spring of 1997. The next
photo to the right is a picture of the repeater with it's front panel
removed, exposing the programming ports of the voice announcers and other
components. That's Steve KD4WIW in the rear of the repeater, after having just
installed a fresh batch of PolyPhaser lightning protection devices into the
repeater's feedline. We DON'T want to rebuild this any time soon!!
The tower structure is about 200
feet tall, and the repeater antenna occupies the top perch. The repeater's
primary antenna is a Sinclair 4 bay dipole array fed through about 300' of
1 5/8" Andrews heliax. The Clayton site is about 335 feet above sea level,
and the antenna is about 535 feet above sea level!
The photo below shows the tower
structure. At the very top is the repeater's Sinclair 4-bay dipole array.
You can view some pictures taken from the top of this tower by clicking
HERE!
