Thanks to some generous donations by Nate WYØX and Doug K2AD, the 224.74 repeater is sounding much better. Nate had always wanted to put up a 222 MHz repeater and at one time even had a 222 MHz repeater pair coordinated through the Colorado Council of Amateur Radio Clubs but the project never materialized. He had acquired a set of duplexers and a front end filter cavity for the project and was trying to find a place to store them when he learned that we were looking for some duplexers to replace the WA-Com’s that had become rather difficult to tune. Nate graciously donated the cans and the filter cavities to ARA for the 224.74. Doug K2AD offered to put everything on the bench and tweak it up for us. Wayne NØPOH, the 224.74 trustee, and his wife Joan KBØYRX made a trip up to Guy Hill and brought down the repeater on a Friday. Wayne went up to Doug’s the next day and we looked at the entire setup.
First Doug tuned up the WA-Com’s and they seemed to tune fairly well however, on key up, there was two to three dB of desence. Next the Sinclair cans where tuned and they had better peaks and notches and exhibited no desence on key up. Looking at the unit, Doug remembered that he had a spare 222 MHz preamp sitting idly around and offered to add one of those the receiver. The tweaking was complete.
The next Tuesday Wayne and John KØZA made the trip back to Guy Hill with the repeater and cans and reinstalled everything. The repeater is useful with an HT from the back deck of Wayne’s house in Aurora. Thanks to one and all for the generosity of materials, equipment and time. If you have 222 capabilities give the 224.74 repeater a visit…
