145.190 / 144.590 with PL 67.0
Johnston - Rhode Island
In the fall of 2003 when Brad KA1SVW and I started making the plans to move the 223.960 & 449.325 repeaters from the Lincoln RI site to Johnston RI with its 350 foot towers I knew that this site would be a prime location for a 2 meter repeater. I started working on a new VHF node right away starting with the hardware needed. First I picked up a Sinclair Q2220E BpBr duplexer and a new Hamtronics REP-200 that was a perfect match to the two existing REP-200's on 220 and 440. The 223.960 & 449.325 repeaters have been on air 7 x 24 for over thirteen years so I was sure purchasing a third VHF repeater from Hamtronics was the right choice.
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In the three photos above you can see the new VHF duplexer before I mounted it into the rack cabinet and the new 2 meter REP-200 just above the 220 & 440 REP-200 repeaters. At this point I was also running / testing with the new FF-800 controller that is now running the 146.460 / 447.775 / 927.6125 repeaters at the Lincoln site which is the blue rack you can see in the first photo.
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The four photos above show the 223.960 & 449.325 repeaters in their original configuration with the Scom 7K. You can see the 220 duplexer is mounted at the bottom of the rack, this would have to be moved up to make room for the large VHF duplexer. After moving most of the components in the original 223.960 & 449.325 rack cabinet around to make room for the new VHF duplexers, VHF power amplifier, and the third REP-200 repeater, I also upgraded the S-Com 7K controller with a new RC-210 which allows the three repeaters to operate as independent nodes or as a stacked repeater in a networked configuration.
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In this photo you can see the VHF duplexer mounted in the bottom of the rack under the power supply, the third REP-200, and the new RC-210. This third VHF repeater was a natural addition to the existing 220 and 440 nodes already on the air and even though the new VHF repeater was build almost 15 years after the 220 & 440 repeaters they all fit together beautifully in the same rack cabinet.
In the spring of 2005 after several months of building and testing at the Lincoln site we moved the 145.190 / 223.960 / 449.325 repeater stack to the Johnston site.
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These three photos are of all three repeaters on-air at the Johnston site.
In the front view from top to bottom is the RC-210 controller, then three REP-200's with 145.190 on top - 449.325 in the middle - 223.960 on the bottom, then the UHF duplexer, 60 Amp power supply, an surge protected power strip. The very bottom is a blank plate that is protecting the VHF duplexer. The photos of the side view you can see the large VHF duplexer across the bottom of the rack, the 220 MHz duplexer standing vertical in the back of the rack with the power amplifiers above.
Update October 2007
After months of waiting, repairs, and upgrades all three of the Johnston repeaters are back on the air and working great.
A new 144.590 receiver was installed, new GLB Pre-selector/Pre-amp units were installed on all three receivers, and all of the RF cables were replaced with new Andrew FSJ-2 hard-line.
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