Many times we have spoken about a cold solder joint that we’ve not fixed on the 146.7 MHz repeater.  What happens is once the temperature in the building gets down to about 40 degrees, the power amplifier stops transmitting. The repeater still hears people and does transmit, but only the exciter is transmitting. When this happens, you have to be right in front of the building to hear anything on the radio.

Well needless to say, the building has reached that point and will likely remain that cold until Tuesday when we can get in there and turn on some heat.  So for this reason, the 146.7 MHz repeater is off the air.  The 443.3 MHz repeater is still on the air but has limited range.  WX5DEL and K5GLH often monitor this repeater along with 147.48 MHz simplex when the repeater is off the air.  We’ve begun to receive more sleet than rain here in Del City at the moment so we may not have the icing problems that we thought since sleet does not stick to trees and power lines. Of course as soon as I typed that, it started raining again. At this stage, who knows.

Last night we lost Internet and phone service for about five hours but is now back on.  When that happens, we lose our streaming audio of the 146.7 MHz repeater.  Since we can’t reach the repeater anyway, that is not too much of a loss.  The streaming audio IS back on and listens to 146.7 MHz so anyone speaking on that frequency on simplex would still be heard.  We’ll update as conditions change.