WELCOME TO THE RIO GRANDE VALLEY CHAPTER OF THE
REDEYE NET.
WELCOME TO THE T.S.A.R.C. / E.A.R.T.H. VOTER PROJECT PAGE.
The K5DG Repeater (146.960 Mhz) is located in LaFeria, Texas, and is a one frequency system covering the entire Rio Grande Valley for the convenience of our Winter Texans and Local Hams. It is Valley Wide and has no PL tone, best of all you do not have to change frequencies as you travel throughout the Valley. All our nets are held on this system, which eventually will be Valley Wide for HT coverage as well!
The Voter System, as you may not realize is one of the few voter systems, installed ands utilized by Amateur Radio Operators, that has succeeded in working. There are a few small problems with the system today but we anticipate they will be worked out as time and money become available. I hope that you will join me in THANKING all of the technical committee and other volunteers for their hard work.
E.A.R.T.H. ( Emergency Amateurs Responding To Help) moved their voter receiver site which was located in Alamo to a site in McAllen which is on Dove Street. The McAllen site will give better coverage in McAllen and places West.
The City of Harlingen is currently installing their new 800 Mhz. trunking system. T.S.A.R.C. has installed the 440 link beam at the 100 ft. level with hard-line as the city specifications called for. We are waiting for the final step, the city will provide a VHF antenna to receive the the voters incoming signal at 174 ft. We continue to utilize a temporary site in Harlingen for local area coverage.
Cameron County has provided us space on the County Court House for the voter site in the Brownsville area. Mike (KC5MAI), is installing this site. The antennas are up and the voter is ready to be installed.
The Raymondville voter is up and running thanks to Randy, (N5YK) and has coverage to approximately 22 miles north of Raymondville.
The Weslaco voter is still working well thanks to John (KC5WBG).
A new voter has been installed in LaFeria to add coverage from LaFeria to Weslaco. When the Harlingen Site is running at the 174 foot level this site might be changed depending upon the coverage that the Harlingen site will provide.
Tone boards are being added to all the UHF voter transmitters and the UHF voter receivers at the main site. This should eliminate some of the interferience problems that have occurred. Also remember that the voter system is constructed from old G.E. Master II's and because they are old some components have already been replaced. Many thanks to Toby,(N5SIM) for late nite hours at the Laferia site and KC5MAI, KC5NLO, KA0ARS, KC5WBG, K5DG, KA0WAS, N5YK and all the others.
Once all the sites are up, then the whole system will have to be re-tuned, power levels adjusted and the noise to signal tweaked for optimum performance. Once this is done the voter system will be the finest in not only the Rio Grande Valley, but also in Texas. Thus being something we can all be very proud of.
What does it cost to install a voter site?
The cost of building and installing a voter site can be summerized as follows.
GE Master II UHF 100w...............$199.00
GE Master II VHF 100w...............$199.00
Crystals 3@ $27.00.................$081.00
UHF Beam Antenna....................$120.00
VHF Antenna.........................$119.00
Power supply........................$150.00
Coax/hard-line......................$150.00
Misc. items.........................$075.00
Total $1093.00
40 T.S.A.R.C. members @ $25.00 = $1000,00 in dues does not even cover the cost of 1 voter site.
5 sites @ $1093.00 = $5465.00. This does not include the cost of the main voter site which has antennas, 75 amp power supply, 175 watt amplifier, voter board and controller, cabnets, hardline and other misc. connectors and hardware. As you can see, the Technical Committee has been real busy, and still is, and all the problems that have been incurred are being worked out.
How does the cost of a voter compaire to a repeater? that will be in the next issue.