How the Blackstone Valley RF "Void" got filled with a new and exciting band!
| The Cumberland 927.6750 repeater, (-25mhz offset, DPL244 In/Out) is on the air high above Beacon Pole Hill in the Cumberland Hill section of Providence County, Rhode Island. This is a short page thanking all who have helped me get this marvelous repeater on the air!
Click photo for enlarged view to the South! The portable level coverage of this machine is exceptional within the Cumberland, Woonsocket, North Smithfield, Lincoln, as well as neighboring Bellingham, Blackstone, and Uxbridge; Mobile coverage extends south on 295 towards Route 6 in Johnston north to the intersection of Route 495 and Route 95 in Mansfield. Mobile coverage is even more impressive!
Click image above for full-screen view! The repeater its self consists of a Motorla MSF5000 Digital (CXB) station; converted for Analog use. I've equipped my repeater with a high-stability Efratom Rubidium Oscillator (10mhz reference oscillator) as opposed to the 5mhz TXCO's used by the other groups. I've had great luck with these commercially and suspect they'll work well for years to come. The station is connected to a paging dupelexer which utilizes a comb-type filter; the power output of the station is reduced to 125watts; 98 watts post-dupelexer. There is approximately 200' of LDF-7 feedline; antenna is a 9DB gain commercial antenna.
5/12/09 - Installation of the "new" (antenna that was donated to GEMOTO, and re-gifted by K1RJZ) antenna at the 160' level was performed by N1LRS (Tony Araujo) on May 12th, 2009 on a once-abandoned piece of LDF-7. By using some ingenuity, we were able to re-use one of the side-arms near the top to get the finished product!
7/25/09 - Installation of the replacement antenna was completed by N1RWW, Scott; as well as a ground-crew of K1LLL (Jon), K1JWB (John), and of course, myself - N3LEE! Fortunately this time around, we came prepared with good camera batteries; so here are some awesome photos of Scott doing some breathtaking maneuvers at 160 feet in the air!
REMINDER - Click for larger versions!
and for those of you who are unfamiliar with what 180 feet looks like....
Scott is the blip 6 foot tall blip at 160 feet! Makes those 10-15 foot long antennas look small!
I have some varied video clips which i hope to string together and get on YouTube!
N1RWW, WN1X, W1YRC, K1JWB, KB1OCT, K1LLL, N1JOY, W2DAN, and GEMOTO for assistance in this project! Associated Radio Amateurs of Southern New England : For dealing with this beast in the back of the radio club for the past 8 months... Plasse Tower Rentals thanks to Mike for the very reasonable accomodations at this wonderful site! K1RJZ New antenna for Cumberland Repeater N1LRS Installation of Antenna at Cumberland Site WA1MIK and his contributions to the "MSF5K Repeater Builders" website N1PXA - Will - For tuning the dupelexerKB1RQJ - John - For almost getting divorced due to the amount of time it took to align the station "quickly" KB1OCT - Dave - For helping me get the station up and running as well as doing some initial tweaking and drive-testing! KB1RQJ - John - For his time contributions towards this project.
Steve and Laura Boyko from Sky High Enterprises |
