HoWL Repeater Update

Over the past month, a number of reports have come in of issues with the VO2WL UHF repeater, which also acts as the central Hub for our network and any external stations linking into our repeater network. Reports have ranged from poor audio quality between linked nodes to “The entire network is Dead!”

A couple of days of troubleshooting has turned up a few problems, the most significant, being the link between VO2LMC & VO2WL. LMC has a permanent connection to VO2WL & will automatically reconnect if the 13cm link drops & comes back up. On Wednesday, Nov 20., the winds were fairly high, and the link between the stations was up & down on a second by second basis, causing VO2WL to be in a constant Connect, Disconnect, Reconnect or a “Loop” as one report described it. The problem was temporarily resolved by remotely disabling the 13cm link at the club end.

The 13cm link was brought back up the morning of Friday, Nov 22 & a connection to the LMC 2m controller was established & the “Permanent” Link to VO2WL was disabled, preventing LMC from disrupting WL. The 13cm link is still going up & down constantly, but not as frequent as during the wind on Wednesday. Anyone else out there thinking bad antenna or connection up at the LMC site! Only a site visit can determine that at this point .

VO2LMC is still operational as a standalone RF repeater but connecting it to our Allstar network is not an option at this time & it will remain disconnected. VO2WL also appears to be back to normal after an extended QSO.

As a side note ( and to stick in a few graphics :-), below is a comparison of signal strength & transfer speeds of the 13cm link. I took some benchmark tests back on Aug 5, 2024 and ran the same tests again on Friday, Nov 22 for comparison.

On Friday, Nov 22, Huge drop in signal & speed… when does manage to connect.

Thanks to VO1ACZ for his tremendous help as usual!

73,

de VO2GO