[BCWARN-ANNOUNCE] RBY Site Troubles...

Wed Apr 13 22:01:53 PDT 2011

Hi All,

Just a follow up after Matt, VE7DUI Duncan, VE7NEO and myself returned to
the site this evening

*Summary*

1)  We were unable to reproduce the inverter temperature fault, even after
running the inverter at 155A load for nearly 2hours.  FET temperature never
exceed 49deg C.  Our only thought at this point is that RFI from our feed
line testing might have been the cause of the fault last night.

2) We moved the temporary 1/4 wave VHF RMS antenna outside onto the roof

3) We adjusted both TX and RX audio levels on the 220MHz repeater so that it
is now in balance with 144 and 442 repeaters.  Repeater was left offline as
it's awaits new feed line terminations

We will attempt to get new feed lines run for VHF RMS and 220 before Sunday.

Thanks
Ian
VE7HHS
*
*

On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 12:43 AM, Ian Procyk <iprocyk at telus.net> wrote:

> 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
>> _______________________________________________
>> BCWARN-ANNOUNCE mailing list
>> BCWARN-ANNOUNCE at bcwarn.net
>> http://mailman.bcwarn.net/mailman/listinfo/bcwarn-announce
>> _______________________________________________
>> BCWARN mailing list
>> BCWARN at bcwarn.net
>> http://mailman.bcwarn.net/mailman/listinfo/bcwarn
>>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.bcwarn.net/pipermail/bcwarn-announce/attachments/20110413/a00ab968/attachment.htm>