Two Meter Repeater.
| The Pella
Amateur Radio Club owns and operates a two meter repeater
located in Otley, IA, about 5 miles west of Pella. The
equipment is at the water tower owned by the Iowa Rural
Utilities Association. The antenna is about 190 feet
above ground level and 270 feet above average terrain. The repeater provides coverage out to about 30 miles. It operates with the Club's assigned call of KØPEA ("PEA" being the Pella Airport ID) It is intended to provide coverage throughout all of Marion County, which would be most useful for weather spotting and reporting, as well as proviging coverage in case of emegency communications needs. At present, there are some coverage problems that inhibit this goal, and the Club is working to overcome them. This is still a work in progress. |
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The equipment
is housed in a locked cabinet located inside the tower base. The repeater istelf is a Kenwood TKR-720K2, running at 15 Watts @ 100% Duty Cycle This signal is then fed to a Crescend VVC 100-25 RF amplifier, providing 60 Watts output. The Duplexer is a Telewave TPRD-1454 with four cavities, about 75 dB of Isolation, connected to a lightning arrester, then up about 200 feet of Andrews LDF4-50AQ one half inch Heliax coaxial feed line to a Hustler G6-144B antenna, which provides some 6.5 dBi gain. The controller for the repeater is a Micro Computer Concepts RC-1000. All this is powered by an Astron RM-35 regulated power supply. Backup power consists of three 45AH AGM batteries that are on a floating charge. |
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