Ripon Repeater On-the-Air

195-foot tower at Ripon Fire (click for larger image)The new 147.210 repeater in Ripon went on-the-air tonight and seems to be working about as expected. The repeater is located at Ripon Fire at about 60 feet on their 195-foot tower. The antenna is a half-wave whip atop a metal sheet (built by Ray of Ray’s Radio).

The antenna is fed with LMR 400 coax, probably about 80 feet of line (thanks to Ripon firefighters for the installation) connected to the 6-cavity Telewave duplexer and the Vertex repeater. I think we are getting about 10-20 watts out the antenna.

Look carefully on the right side of the tower to see our antenna (click for larger image)

The repeater works fine, but isn’t real “big” with this set-up. We hope to raise the antenna gain a bit, maybe raise the antenna up the tower, and perhaps increase power. And we need a non-borrowed repeater and controller to make this a permanent installation.

Coverage is not well-documented at the moment. Works in Manteca, works at my house on the rooftop antenna, works in Ripon, etc. 

Thanks to Ripon FD Chief Dennis Bitters, Phil Cook from the EMS Agency, Ray of Ray’s Radio, Fred WB6ASU and Tim K6TRK for their help with this project.

The repeater and duplexer (click for larger image)

For now, the repeater is IDing as N5FDL/R, in Morse code only.

Besides a permanent repeater, gain antenna, and better feedline, we’d also like to install a controller similar to the one on the 147.015 + PL 82.5 Tracy repeater and link the two over the Internet, perhaps using Ubiquiti microwave technology to link the sites.