Good day surfers of the web!
I wanted to take a few minutes to give an update on the repeater projects, since it’s been about 2 months since my last formal update. As a refresher for those not in the know - the repeater that I run died not long ago (I wrote about that here.) When that happened a couple very kind individuals donated some money to help out, I started an official fund-raiser to fund repairing my machine, and some others as well, and I also opened up a shop selling merchandise to raise money for the same effort.
So first of all, the plugs - support some repeaters financially, or with donations of equipment, or by connecting an existing repeater to the Pride Network. Donations of cash, or commitments to connect existing repeaters to the Pride Network have the biggest and fastest impact!
if donations aren’t your bag, Buy some cool stuff to support the projects. In addition to getting some neat stuff, walking around town, going to club meetings, or heading out to a hamfest, while wearing the swag helps bring more attention to the effort, and can be very impactful in the long run!
On with the Update
First - if interested in the nitty gritty details, the financial status is available here. every dollar helps, so PLEASE DONATE!
Milestone 1 Successfully Completed!
We raised enough in cash and donations of parts that we were able to reach our “Level 2” goal for my N3VEM repeater! There were a couple very generous cash donations, and a decent number of sales through the shop, which helped purchase some of the needed misc. bits to get back on the air, plus a donation of a couple key replacement parts for the repeater that let us get the same? a replacement? repeater back on the air. The question marks are there, because while it’s in theory the same repeater, so much of it is now replaced parts, that its kind of like the old parable about the sailboat - if you’ve replaced all the timbers and all the planks over the course of a number of years, is it still the same boat, or is it a whole new boat?
Either way, we’re back in business at 100%!
This means that we are now more formally pushing ahead and have…
Milestone 2 Underway!
Milestone two, the KJ7OMO Repeater, has officially started! With some of the left over cash from donations and shop sales, I’ve already started building a “new” repeater for KJ7OMO. The core parts are already in hand, so over the next couple months I will mostly be buckling down and doing some physical assembly, basic machining on the enclosure that will house everything, programming of radios, etc. There will likely still be an additional $100-$200 worth of misc. hardware and connectors to purchase, so please keep the donations and shop purchases coming, as all of the funds raised are now being directed straight into this part of the effort.
Milestone 3 - Future
While nothing official has been decided, I am starting to put some stuff on the “workbench of the mind” while we’re working on the KJ7OMO machine. I currently have 3 machines in inventory, and am leaning towards building Milestone 3 around one of the Kenwood TKR-820 machines that I have on hand. These are older, but reliable, machines. Both of the ones I have were narrow banded, so I’ll need to either revert them back to wide-band, or maybe leave it narrow-banded and use it connected to a hot-spot of sorts to convert it to one of the various digital modes. In addition to the machine itself, we’ll also need to ultimately find a physical home and a trustee (i.e. the callsign it will operate under) for it as well. Lots of decisions to still be made!
Anyway, that’s the update for now! Thanks for stopping by!