Hortonville VHF Repeater

[w9...@aol.com]

Hello, 

I need your help in testing the range of the Hortonville 146.865 repeater.  PL: 77 Hz  

Quite a bit of work has been done over the past two days to resolve hardware issues affecting receive sensitivity. After reworking the main RF connector on the 7/8 inch hardline, the antenna now seems to test fine. (1.2 to 1 SWR, down from nearly 2 to 1 before.)  There was an anomaly on the outside grounding bus bar.  The grounding wire and its connector have been replaced and that now seems to be ok.  The duplexer tuning was a little bit off.  The duplexer was pulled, retuned and improved, which will help reduce the transmitter to receiver de-sense. In short, all of the hardware issues on the repeater have been taken care of.  

But, there is still the mysterious interference.

I don't know how much the hardware improvements have improved the receive range of the repeater, so I need your help in checking to see if you can tell any difference in the range.  Please let me know how well you used to be able to hit the repeater (most couldn't hit it at all) and if it is any better now. I would like to know either way.  Please let me know your location, too. 

If there is little or no appreciable difference in performance, we will look at moving this repeater to the new tower going up next summer in the northern part of the county.     

Thank you and I hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving.  

73,

John, W9KD