W8ZES W8ZES Repeater Repeater

Ok ok, its all my fault! This repeater was started because I was being moved to the basement. Because of this, I would no longer be able to hit the 94 repeater from my desk! I was mulling over in my mind how to overcome this problem. One day I mentioned my problem to John, and he said "Hey! lets put in a repeater!!". It sounded kinda expensive to me,"No problem, I'll talk to Jack". says John, and off he went. In case you didn't know, Jack is the president of where we work...Oh by the way, yes he too is a ham. He liked the idea and gave us some $$$ to spend.

Originally, we were just going to have the repeater cover the inside of our plant, and have it remotely control a 2 meter radio. But Jack decided he wanted to be able to use the repeater from his house. Due to this new requirement, it became necessary to put the repeater in the building across the street, with a 50 foot tower. When we finally got it "on the air" it worked well. Yes Jack could hit it from his house, and he was happy. But there was still one small problem. It would only cover part of our little town. You see, Lexington is in a bit of a valley, and the antenna is on the side of a hill. There was only one answer! So John "talked to Jack" again, and now we have a 140 foot tower! The remote base antenna is a the 100 foot mark, and is connected to a Kenwood TM-241. This allows us to link to several 2 meter repeaters that are in the vicinity.

The frequency of this repeater is 443.225 with a plus offset. PL is 146.2 Hz.
If you are in the area, feel free to use it...Jack would want it that way!

Below are some photos of our little project.

Here is the hole for the base of the tower.
That's Jim, WB8TBG wondering if it's big enough.

I hope so too Jim!

That's Bob, WB8GGR with the shovel. Behind him is Bruce, N8KJS.
On the right side of the tower is Ken, KC8JTX.

Yes, the tower REALLY is straight! Remember, its on the side of a hill!

Here the tower is at 30 feet.
That's John, WB8RHV the tower jockey.

Taking a Pepsi break, enjoying the view.

This is Craig, KB8RWN and yes, he REALLY is helping!

Finally John installs the main antenna!

Here is the repeater.

A closer look inside:

The repeater is a Yaesu Vertex VXR-5000 with an output of 25 watts. Its the white box above the power supply. Above it is the CAT1000 repeater controller. In the upper right is the 2 meter remote base and its controller. In the upper left is the duplexer. We wanted a REALLY BIG battery for the semi-regular power outages here. We aren't sure how long the repeater will run on battery power, we think for several days though! The other stuff is the charger, and the battery switching circuitry.

Psssst! Wanna see what it looks like from the top of the tower? Well then click here!

Those who helped:

  • Jack, W8ZES
  • Jim, W8ZET
  • John, N8JY
  • Mike, WB8ERJ
  • Jim, WB8TBG
  • Ken, KC8JTX
  • Bob, K8RFM
  • Bruce, N8KJS
  • John, N8RJI
  • Norm, WB8WRS
  • Craig, KB8RWN
  • Dave, N8DPW
  • John, WB8SFV
  • Rick, KC8DLE
  • Jim, KC8SLK
  • Larry Layman
  • John Setser

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