Henry VK2ZHE, Lyle VK2SMI and Arthur VK2ATM ventured to the Middle Brother Repeater site on Saturday to look at the failed VK2RPM-1 APRS Digipeater.  Its Philips FM-828 transceiver has stopped working and will be looked at during the Wednesday’s Working Bee.

The Icom repeater currently running VK2RPM on 2m 146.7Mhz was also removed during the visit for testing at the Working Bee with a view to eliminating it as a piece of the inter-mod puzzle that continues to plague the site on VHF.  In its place is Henry VK2ZHE’s Yaesu DR-1X repeater which has been set to auto receive both analog FM and C4FM digital (aka System Fusion) and to transmit in analog FM only.

Finally, the club’s new Yaesu DR-1X was installed in place of the Philips FM-815 VK2RPM 70cm 438.525MHz repeater.  This repeater is currently set to Auto/Auto so will automatically repeat in whichever mode you transmit to it – thereby enabling the operation of full digital C4FM via Middle Brother on UHF.

Current plans are to reinstall both the repaired APRS VK2RPM-1 Digipeater and the tested Icom 146.7MHz 2m repeater next week.

VK2RPM-1 Digipeater: Off-Air

VK2RPM 2m Repeater: Analog FM input, Analog FM Output
VK2RPM 2m Repeater: C4FM Digital input, Analog FM Output

VK2RPM 70cm Repeater: Analog FM input, Analog FM Output*
VK2RPM 70cm Repeater: C4FM Digital input, C4FM Digital Output

*Users should note that any packet like signals heard on 438.525 will be C4FM digital transmissions which can be decoded using a Yaesu C4FM transceiver.