A crew consisting of David WQVS960, Bill WQXE928 and David-2 WRJF717 rolled up to the Mt. Lemmon site at 9:00 AM Saturday with a long task list and got right down to business. By the time the day was done, they had touched nearly every major system at the site and left it in better shape than they found it.
The centerpiece of the day’s work was bringing a new transmitter combiner online. Getting that system commissioned meant the site could make full use of a new DB408 UHF antenna that the team mounted at the 45-foot level on the tower and tied into the combiner. With that infrastructure now in place, the site has three additional UHF transmit ports available and waiting for future repeaters should they be needed.
On the receive side, the crew installed a new receive multicoupler and took the opportunity to upgrade the feedline on the sites’ 2-meter master receive antenna. That antenna is a shared resource for both the N7HND 145.250 and the N7GMR 146.680 C4FM repeaters and should squeeze a couple more dB out of the receive system, so the tidy-up was a win for both systems.
With the new multicoupler operational and combiner in place, a new commercial UHF repeater was also installed and the W7FED TRASH repeater on 443.200 now has much better transmit coverage than it did before.
Not everything was about the tower. The team also replaced a building-mounted antenna that supports the N7GMR Winlink gateway, keeping that digital messaging capability in good health. They also installed a halo antenna as part of K6DSA’s remote base station, which will support weak-signal work on 2-meter SSB and bring that operating mode within reach for remote operations that utilize the site for which the 9,000′ mountaintop provides a monster advantage.
It was the kind of day that doesn’t happen without a crew willing to make the drive, haul the gear, and work through a task list together. Thanks to everyone who showed up and put in the effort. The site is better for it.
73!