[BCWARN-ANNOUNCE] RBY Site Troubles...

[Ian Procyk]

Hi All,

Just following up on the earlier announcement from Duncan...  We've got some
more trouble up at the RBY repeater site:

*Quick Summary:*

1. MS2012 Magnasine Inverter has faulted - we have no UPS power for All AC
loads.  They have been transferred off to another aux CCT which is only
protected by generator power.

2. The 220 Repeater is now offline due to a High SWR condition on its feed
line.  Also note that pending its return to air, we need to investigate a
low RX AF level.  This has been evident over the course of the last few
Monday night net's where people checking in on 220 sound about 6dB quieter
than those on VHF or UHF.

3. The VE7SCC-10 RMS VHF node is operating on a temporary indoor antenna
also due to a high SWR condition on its feed line.  Its deviation level has
been adjusted and is now in spec (software issue caused it to become very
low a few weeks ago).


*Background:*

Matt and myself went on site for 7:30pm this evening to investigate low
deviation on the VE7SCC-10 RMS node.  In the process of doing some basic
checks on the gear we noticed very high SWR on both the SCC-10 RMS Packet
feed line and the VE7RBY 220MHz feed line.

We shutdown the 220 repeater and RMS node to investigate further... About 10
minutes later while on the roof with a 50ohm load, Matt who was inside with
the BIRD power meter called out on the radio saying "that all the racks had
just lost AC power". I came off the roof and headed inside.  Sure enough,
the inverter control panel indicates "Internal NTC fault" (it thinks its too
hot) and it the inverter/charger has dropped all AC loads.  We saw this
error a few times last year and ended up replacing the FET board at the
manufacturer's recommendation.  We haven't had an issue until tonight (lucky
we were on site).  We reset the inverter and ventured to carry on trying to
isolate high SWR on the two feed lines.

After pulling back the entire 220MHz feed line, inspecting every inch for
faults or kinks we find one of the terminations is bad and needs to be
re-done.  This time it will be replaced with N-type connectors. This wasn't
evident on the roof and only showed up once we had the cable laying a
certain way on the floor in the elevator machine room.

Before we could get onto troubleshooting the VHF RMS feed line, the inverter
dumped again.  We lost all the AC loads once more.  This time we decided to
re-route power to another auxiliary source thus removing all AC loads from
the MS2012 inverter/charger.

Both of us having to work tomorrow and now running out of time, we decided
to delay the investigation of the VHF RMS feed line until tomorrow
(Wednesday night).  So instead we setup a temporary 1/4wave mag-mount inside
the machine room and connected that to the RMS packet node so that we could
proceed to troubleshoot the low deviation issue.  After some remote AX25
testing from Geoff, VE7KA and Jeremy, VA7NSA, Matt and I were able to
determine that a lack of audio level from the TNC was causing the low
deviation.  Several trial and error adjustments in software were made to
once again re-correct this.  The VE7SCC-10 RMS packet node now shows 3KHz
deviation on the communications analyzer - good.

Before packing things up, we shutdown the inverter portion of the MS2012,
leaving only the charger functioning.  When we left the site the charger was
pushing ~90A @ 13.8V into the battery bank.  With nearly 1400AH of battery
capacity, we should have no problem riding until tomorrow afternoon if the
Magnasine charger faults again overnight.

Matt and I left the site at 11:15pm.

I plan to return tomorrow night with a 30A Samlex charger for backup, and if
time permits I will also work on repairs to the feed line connectors.

Thanks for your patience and understanding, especially with the SunRun right
around the corner.

73
Ian
VE7HHS





On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 7:27 PM, Duncan Meakins <bcfmca at meakins.ca> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Please be advised that the VE7SCC-10 packet node at the VE7RBY/SFU
> site may experience service interruptions this evening due to
> unscheduled maintenance. Deviation on the node appears to be outside
> of normal levels. VE7HHS and VE7DUI will be on site to investigate the
> issue.
>
> Please address any concerns to support at bcwarn.net.
>
> Thank you
>
> Duncan Meakins
> BCWARN
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