VK6RBN Busselton 147.350+
 
This repeater is located about 25 Kilometres 
South of the town of Busselton on the farming 
property of VK6EL and VK6ZWH, Beth & Alan. 

Busselton is 200 Kilometres South of Perth. 
The repeater can be found on 147.350 MHz +. 

The entire installation was put together 
by WARG over several months. 

Many amateurs (about 40) worked on the site, 
clearing, digging and jack hammering the 
7 one cubic metre guy and centre points, 
errecting the 150' (47M) tower, and 
installing the DC power run to the garden shed 
that houses the repeater. 
The original power run was a story all on its own.
Some 8 kilometres of copper wire
was run along the fence line back to Beth and Alan's farm.
The distance was 2 kilometres but each leg of the circuit
was double run making the total of 8 kilometres.

The total circuit resistance was about 10 Ohms from memory.
40 Volts DC was supplied from the farm house and a regulator at the
repeater end  produced 13.6 Volts to float charge a large 100 AH battery.

This worked for a few years but breaks in the wire due to the poor condition of the fence,
and cows brushing against it resulted in the installation of solar power
and the DC power run disconnected.
All in all quite an accomplishment and
looking back I wonder how we managed to do it.

All concrete for the site was mixed on site in two petrol driven mixers.
Everything for the 7 one cubic metre guy points had to be brought onto the site
including all the water for the concrete.
About a dozen people worked from Sun up to Sun down to complete all the concrete work,
including a floor for the shack.
It was a perfect mild day with some drizzle, ideal for concrete work.

Most of the regular workers travelled from Perth (200 KM) over many months.
It was estimated that a total of 40,000 KM was travelled all up in total by all the workers.
Sounds increadible I know but for example if 5 cars travelled from Perth
10 times then this would equal 20,000 KM, sure adds up!
Some people made the 10 trips from Perth.

The photo shows the site as it was in 1989.
There has been a commercial shed added since then and a few more antennas.
The large white vertical at the top is a 6dB omni for the voice repeater,
and the two 10 element beams an off air link direct from Perth for the WIA news.
This has since seen changes in that the WIA news is now received from Mt.William,
some 80 kilometres North on a 3 element beam. The 10 element beams remain but are not used.
A packet system is also on site and uses a vertical antenna about 2 thirds the way up
(but not shown in this early photo).
This photo shows the inside of the garden shed 
that houses the repeater and support equipment. 
 The voice repeater shown is the original (now an FM880) using an Icom IC22a cut up and mounted inside the copper PCB boxes, is in the centre of the picture. 

To the right is an HF transceiver used for some tests from the site. 
Under the bench is the cavity duplexer. 

To the right of these cavity filters is the power distrubution board bringing in the DC from the 2KM long feed. 
The box on the far left of the top shelf is the WIA News link receiver 
connected through the cavity filters above it on the wall. 
Photo dates to about 1984
 
Updated photos.....August 1997

The site manager is Ron VK6QB

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