October 10. 2020. Your JARA President and Trustee, along with PKARC President and one supervisory parent made the trek skyward and added the new Workman UVS-200 U/VHF antenna to the top of the St. John tower. This added 15′ of height and put the receive antenna in the clear. We are looking for your signal reports in comparison to your repeater experience prior to Saturday, October 10th.
We are very grateful for Dave-KØAVN who “took it to the top”. The picture shows Dave installing the dual band antenna at the top of the 30′ tower. Also shown is the hospital’s commercial UHF repeater antenna. Out antenna is receive-only and the signal is run through a filter. So far, both systems are operating without mutual interference.
The previous receive antenna was mid-tower. The new antenna is higher up and “in the clear”. Preliminary results experienced on the Sunday evening, October 11th JARA weekly Fusion net indicated that the repeater has a much greater sensitivity on receive. Spots where 25 watts were previously needed now requires only 5 watts for perfect copy. Many stations can now operate with just 0.5W from a hand-held.
The picture on the right shows the old receiver antenna to the left of the microwave dish. We are now using it as a control link.
Dave reported an outstanding view from the top and it seems our antenna is as high as anything atop the VA Hospital on the east side of Highway 7.
The other members of the crew were Dave’s father, Art, Gary-WØMNA, and Rick-NJØP.