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VE7QNX Repeater
I have a repeater running at my house: VE7QNX 443.375+ T100.0 IRLP: 1337
The repeater is an Harris Alpha 2000:
The primary motivation for this repeater is better IRLP performance. The current configuration of IRLP on VE7RXZ is through a remote radio with a node connected to it. It is not full-duplex. If the node is connected to a net and we want to disconnect, we have to wait until a gap in communication on the net as the node radio transmits when there is activity on the net and does not receive the disconnect DTMF tones. The remote node also picks up everything the repeater transmits. This includes the repeater id. This is a no-no on reflectors which is where a lot of nets happen. This repeater has the node connected directly to the repeater and avoids these issues.
I have been testing it for the last week. For all nets and round tables, I have been connecting this repeater to VE7RXZ. I will continue to do that. For people in Gibsons it may help them use portables on nets and when people experience multipath to Nanaimo it might mean better communication for them. The coverage is pretty good in upper Gibsons.
Please feel free to use this repeater. We will be connecting it to the Rainbow Country Net most mornings. There are lots of other nets to connect to if people are interested. There is a new “Canada trunk” on node 9029 that is being worked on. The UBC UHF repeater is connected, the North Fraser Amateur Radio Club is connecting a lot of their repeaters, as are some repeaters in Ontario. I expect the number of repeaters connected to it to grow. I may connect to that some days.
The repeater is running on solar power and so far it hasn't been running my batteries down too much. We will see how that changes in the winter time.