2024 |
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10/03/2024 | ON
GOING REPEATER WORK GB3CW Our lads have been busy again, but this time elsewhere! On this occasion GB3CW, the new FM 2M repeater in Fareham. John 2E0ZBE found out that the GB3CW repeater needed duplexers,John was aware that Andy G4MYS knew of some being offered for sale. The duplexers are identical to those used on GB3SH, which ment We coud supply identcal paperwork about the filters to the group, the filters were located, by Andy G4MYS, and Tuned carefully to spec and frequency by Richard G4WFR, who runs GB7SU, who spent a happy Saturday afternoon very carefully realigning them and note another set for another group. We wish the RNARS all the best with there new project. No doubt they will apricate reception reports. GB3CW transmits on channel RV49 145.6125Mhz FM, using 71.9Hz CTCSS. The Rx is of course -600Khz repeater shift, and Came on air Sunday 10th March 2024. Andy G4MYS |
20/02/2024 | SITE
INSPECTION / MAINTENANCE As a result of scheduled inspections after the many high wind speed storms, and the resulting loss of the wind indication vane on the Weather station, Members went to site this morning and corrected the lean on the GB3SU and GB7IV aerials, the problem had been caused mainly by uneven nut tightness on the lower SMC 73 style mast clamps A short term arrangement has been made due to weather deteriorating during the visit. Later we will fit a third clamp as fitted on the GB7MT & GB3SH mast fitted with washers and heavy duty spring washers. As for the weather station the direction van, was lost at 1514 Local time, from the NNW, on Wednesday 27th December 2023, when the wind speed had reached 72.5MPH, the fastest wind speed on site this winter, just one of ten storms where the wind speeds exceeded 60MPH, the vane ended up on the roof, curiously at the north end of the block, so it seems it was blown around until it settled, ( like a lump of a previous TV aerial did) hiding under one of the solar panels. With advice from Nigel G7POC, John 2E0ZBE, which saw Andy G4MYS crawling through a puddle under the solar pane into where John had spotted it, and with the use of WD40, John refitted the vane to the weather station, which now after a couple of months is working again. While work did take place on the aerials, neither GB3SU or GB7IV was turned off, and a QSO between G4ICD & 2E0PKK was unaffected by the clamps being moved and mast being adjusted! With thanks to John 2E0ZBE, Andy G4MYS & Nigel G&POC for the work. ANDY REPEATER KEEPER
G4MYS |
2023 |
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18/11/2023 |
BACK ON AIR SHRG is pleased to report GB3SH and GB7MT are back on air after temporary 13.8 Volt High current power supplies were fitted to care for GB3SH & GB7MT, for the time being. The off air causing fault has been put down to a faulty DC relay distribution unit. The unit was built in Feb. 2019. We will take the opportunity of upgrading the unit and DC cable size to improve performance.. The weather station is working again, it needed its batteries changing, we noted 60MPH winds on site early this morning, and will change t hose batteries once a year from now on, its called ISOUTH502, we also have a weather camera on site that can be found on GB3SH.co.uk select "weather cam". or select "weather" It does seem that fusion can give a considerable improvement in range for mobiles, improvement of range on SH has been noted on the M3 near Baisinstoke and on the A 36 between Wilton and Warminster, as well as towards Ringwood on the A36. Any one any ideas
how far IV signal goes toward Brighton. Answers as ever on the back
of a £50.00 in pencil please. |
31/07/2023 |
WEATHER STATION Isouth502, located
at our repeater station location, will be off for maintenance. Note: This does
not effect the weather camera as that is run by a firm in Bristol, England. |
27/07/2023 |
INTERNET CONNECTION
Andy Repeater Keeper
|
14/07/2023 | HEALTH
CHECK A general response is MT, SH, SU & 7SU are working very well are giving no or little perceived trouble. GB7IV our VHF Fusion linked repeater, was not doing as well as we would like, ESP as regards sensitivity ( deafness ) being around 8db down on SH ,,.. and our investigations are ongoing, for instance We investigated the QRM levels yesterday this took IV off air, on and off for hours while the investigation went on, and SH the VHF Fm repeater 112.5 Khz down band had carriers as part of the test from the Repeaters transmitter, although GB3SH was available for use. . We found that there is an amount of Switch mode power supply interference , from the very tower block were on,, the aerials however hear much less as they are some 25 feet and two floors with thick reinforced concrete above the nearest flats, We checked our own power supplies, and battery chargers and found a weak signal from one of the battery chargers, and more noise coming from the display of the Watson weather station display ( the unit does not work on 433Mhz ! ) Much of this switch mode power supply " noise " effects SH as well, as its extremely broadband over much of the HF and VHF bands. Turning the display
brightness down on the weather station receiver is not the answer, although
if you have one of these it may be jamming your station too!, as the
cause is to do with the driving of the display. The committee would like to thank Karl and Andy for their efforts and YMUK for the loan of test equipment, Meanwhile you are
invited to carry on enjoying the repeaters and in particular experiment
with the fusion facilities of GB7MT and its lRF inked twin in Portsmouth
:GB7PO with their enlarged mobile coverage of Hampshire, West Sussex
and the Island. |
30/06/2023 | GB7IV
OFF AIR PROBLEM We turned off GB7IV yesterday as it has behavioral problems, the precise fault is not known, We will return it to service as soon as possible.. Andy G4MYS |
27/06/2023 |
GB7IV ON AIR IM pleased to report
GB7IV has been returned to air. |
19/06/2023 | GB7IV
LATEST Our team has been to site and confirmed the problem with IV was the DC female Socket, which the DC tail cable plugs in to, these plugs and sockets can go high resistance thus no volts to the equipment. Before putting GB7IV back there is further engineering work and cable tidying to be done, but at this stage We feel that GB7IV will be back by midday 30 June 2023. In addition The
team tackled the loss of the weather station data, ( Isouth 502 ) which
had not been sending for several days, an inspection of the aerials
was also made to ensure their ongoing safe operation, with our grateful
thanks to Nigel G7POC, John 2E0ZBE, Andy G4MYS. |
06/06/2023 |
GB7IV OFF AIR GB7IV our VHF Fusion
repeater has been off air since Sunday 4th June, the problem was found
to be the repeater dead in the rack. |
19/05/2023 | DUPLEXERS
Were pleased to say following the aerial changes, that were now in the position to fit our brand new Amphenol-procomm 145Mhz duplexers. We have been running on a set of brand new low power 600Khz SINCLAIR duplexers obtained from SMC as brand new old stock, at a very good knock down price, and to help us run our legal power output, some second hand time served somewhat unstable filters scrounged from British Gas upon the closedown of their VHF data system some around 15 years ago.... which needed constant adjustment, the cause of the current deafness of GB7IV, and a set of brand new low power 600Khz SINCLAIR duplexers obtained brand new SMC at a very good knock down price. Due to lack of space at GB7IV this will be a very careful change and should happen week starting 22nd May this time at least We don't need good weather! When changed GB7IV should perform almost as well as GB3SH the only difference being SH is licensed for around 25 Watts ERP, so look forward and Enjoy IV and the Southerfusion facility at full power soon! Andy G4MYS Repeater Keeper |
18/05/2023 |
AERIAL CHANGES We had a team of three to site yesterday to do the bi-yearly aerial change with the thought of improving the performance of GB3SH and GB7IV.
GB7IV has been
improved by work on the links to site which although temporary should
do the trick until our wifi links can be made operational, with grateful
thanks to Alan G8IPG Jason M0MZF and Andy G4MYS for their efforts under
a warm sun. |
10/04/2023 | POWER
OUTAGES
This Easter weekend
saw many power cuts at the repeater site, The problem started off site
during Wednesday afternoon with a 3 phase supply failure which initially
took out much of Sholing & Hightown for a while, automatic switching
brought it down to an area surrounding our block which remained without
power until 1530 ish the next afternoon some 12 hours later,.. by which
time power was restored by bringing in 1,500 Kw of diesel generators,
which were parked in the car park, paired up together, one of which
kept on dying on peak loads,(!) thus the ongoing blackouts! |
19/03/2023 |
WEATHER STATION UPDATE We are sorry to
report the loss of both the weather station "ISouth502" and
our camera. This was due to contractors working in a lift house somewhere
in the west of Southampton removing cables and disposing of equipment
which was in use! Also note: were in the progress of introducing another RF facility to our nest or radio equipment more news soon. |
09/03/2023 | WEATHER
STATION & CAMERA Unfortunately the Internet problem had not been fixed and the Weather Station & Camera are off line. It is hoped the problem will be fixed in a few days |
2022 |
|
14/09/2022 |
GB7 IV ENGINEERING GB7IV will be off
air for a period of Thursday 15th September for essential maintenance
and upgrading. This work however will have no impact of the Southern
Fusion Room. |
14/08/2022 |
FRARS RALLY HAM FEST We are pleased to announce that We took from sales and donations: £293:10 before entry costs, which was £8:00. Ourselves and other traders reported low sales, and lower then expected attendance, once again We wonder why, and bearing in mind temperatures reached 33*C / 91*F. Added to the road delays caused by overbridge rebuilding on the Ringwood bypass which may have put some off. We thank our kind donators, and the buyers, and our salesguys for their efforts, in addition to the sales we were able to meet keepers of near by repeaters including GB7SO, GB3IW, GB3DR., and chat to many of our users who came over.
Our next rally will be the Andover Rally at Wildhern Sunday 4th September
2022, Hopefully by then it will have cooled down somewhat. |
31/07/2022 | GB7SU
MOVES TO THORNHILL We are pleased to announce that our DMR Pheonix Repeater GB7SU has moved to join the rest of our repeaters at Hightown, in Thornhill, Southampton. The coverage will be slightly better then that of GB3SU, with slightly higher RSSI readings. The move from the west side of the city will increase the coverge area significantly, and bring Pheonix DMR to most of Hampshire, parts of West Sussex, South east Wiltshire, East Dorset and the nothern half of the Isle of Wight. ( If you can work GB3SU, then you will be able to work GB7SU, as its aerial is clamaped to the top of the '3SU four stack Tetra type antenna .) GB7SU is on 439.450Mhz, with a - ( minus ) 9Mhz Transmit split, it uses "colour code 8", and is permitted 24.5 Watts ERP,... with an aerial 54M ( 177 feet ) above the leafy suberbs of Hightown, overlooking the City, Southampton Water, The Forest, Portsmouth and much of the Island. DMR capable amateur
radio equipment needs to be used, or correctly programmed ex-PMR radios:
such as Motorolla or Hytera. GB7SU is a Motorolla comercial repeater which is internet connected to gain acess to the Local, National and World wide pheonix system of Repeaters. It's on a temporary connection due to the low thoughput of our existing facility which we are working on to upgrade to handle all our needs. Thus our DMR repeater
can handle two QSOs completely separately at the same time, using a
time multiplex system ( see the notes elsewhere on how this works) There
is a number of "rooms" where We call,.. for example, each
region of the UK has its own number , many prefur to call on the national
calling channel of 235, We then QSY to the national working channels
called 81, 82, 83 & 84. the local number is 9/1 and 9/2 where you'll
only be heard in the service area of GB7SU. |
20/07/2022 | READING
RALLY & GB7IV UPDATE
GB7IV is
on air, at full power,.. after very careful realignment of filters by
Alan G8IPG, this means that GB7IV is working very well, it is no longer
suffering blocking or desense ( jamming ) from GB3SH. Newbury Rally. Reading Rally
FLIGHT REFUELING
WIMBORNE Sunday 14th August ( the anniversary of the Marine offences
act ) rally at Wimborne, possibly one of the biggest on the south coast,
well worth going to, check it out at: ANDOVER RADIO
RALLY Sunday 4th September We hope after the
rally we will have enough to pay for the filters and our own GB7IV as
its owner wants it back soon.
|
27/06/2022 | READING
RALLY McMichael Amateur Radio Rally
& Car Boot Sale 2022 The Repeater group will be there. If you have anything to donate contact Andy G4MYS gb3shsu@gmail.com If your able to assist on the day please contact us The rally will be held on Sunday July 17th at 09:30, with car boot setup from 08:30. The location is: Reading Rugby Club, Sonning Lane (B4446) - just off the A4 at Sonning, east of Reading, Berkshire. Postcode: RG4 6ST, NGR SU 753 747 There will be: Large car boot car boot setup from 08:30. area and plenty of free parking for sellers / buyers Snack bar and licensed bar Outdoor barbecue (weather permitting) Demonstrations and displays by special interest groups Admission: £3 per person Car boot sale: £10 per pitch, no booking required https://mcmichaelrally.org.uk/ |
12/06/2022 | GB7IV
UPDATE The GB7IV Duplexers which enable the transmitter and receiver to share one common aerial have been removed from site pending their replacement. We will place an order for a set of new duplexers once we have sufficient funding. We very much hope that a lot of sales can be made at Newbury to fill up the "pot" to enable the purchase of the £4,200 duplexers. The repeater itself will form part of the on air "to a dummy load" display, We will take to The Newbury show on Sunday 26th June at the Newbury showground. As a result we
have put a beacon on to R7: 145.775Mhz at 7 watts ERP in to the usual
aerial, the beacon is on |
29/05/2022 |
GB7 IV WILL BE OFF AIR TEMPORARILY GB7 IV is currently on air, 9 AO 30/5/22, with exceptional low power, and very deaf, neither does it have Internet connection. Southern fusion
can be found on 144.825 Mhz in the Greater Southampton area with grateful
thanks to Paul 2E0PKK, who runs MB7PK. HSBC To pay in this
way take the above details to your bank and transfer as a one off or
regular payments, which can be made and you have full control, not Us! Andy G4MYS Keeper |
27/05/2022 |
NEWBURY RALLY We The group are
booked for the Newbury Rally! : Sunday 26th JUNE 2022 www.nadrs.org.uk
For info |
25/05/2022 | GB7IV
OFF AIR GB7IV our Fusion repeater is rather deaf following weeks of frustrating adjustments of our second hand filters which were de- tuned from 142Mhz. These filters are used together with the duplexer, which is advertised as workable with adjustments but dont really do the job. Alan & Myself feel the best way foreward is to remove IV off air as its both Deaf and on low power TX due to loss of RF in the filters. However the "Southern
fusion" room is operational as usual, and is accessible via the
other repeaters, nodes and hotspots. |
25/04/2022 |
ANDOVER RALLY The Andover Ralley was well supported by Traders, but seemed to be a little down on attendee's, however those who did go reported to us getting stuff they wanted . and certainly we were responsible for some of those excellent finds, included in our sales were 2 colour TVs, never expected to sell them, and 4 almost new mobile phones ( we've still got 4 NOKIA HMD 5.1 at £25:00 each ) We sold lots of aerial wire ( kevlar ), Pye radios, and all sorts of hammy stuff, from 3 pin Yaesu Mic plugs, to N plugs, and did our best yet: £673:50, this take was better then our last two rallys put together! It was also an excellent opportunity to gather information and news.. We'd like to thank our facilitators: The Andover radio club, Malcolm and Marcus. Our sales were Alan
, Marcus and Andy, We thank Alan, Andy, AndyII & Andy, Chris, and the late Chris G4HCL, Father Mc Kenzie, Geoff, Jason, Roger, SMC, for the materials sold. We are planning
on going to Newbury on Sunday 26th June, this is a big rally one of
the best, and we'd like to go with more gear! so what do you have you
bearing in mind others do buy what we think of as junk, so if its radio
related, Please advise us so we can collect from you! |
18/03/2022 |
WEATHER CAM We are pleased to report t hat our camera and weather station has returned, late friday evening, the fault proved to be in the Shirley area of Southampton, We are grateful to Peter G6GFA for sorting out the wifi link quickly We are sorry to report that on a beautiful blue sky day like today weve lost Camera and weather station data link at 0425 AM, this morning, Friday 18th March 2022 We are pleased
to say that "GB7IVsouthernfusion" has a short term "private"
arrangement, and will not be disturbed by this data circuit failure.
At this stage we have no idea on how long it will take to restore the
link. |
13/02/2022 | ABP
RUN
We were very pleased
with the fast response from many of our supporters, unfortunately not
enough have volunteered for us to apply to help as a group, to give
a hand, and raise the £250:00 We could of received for our group.
on SUNDAY 24th
April more details later! |
07/02/2022 |
CAUGHT
ON CAM The GB7PO & GB7MT link has been restored, The problem was caused by a malfunction with the UPS machine which powers the Microwave link between the two repeaters. The UPS machine
has been reset and hopefully this is a one off problem. We thank Alan
G8IPG & Andy G4MYS, who went to site, and in particular Wes G7CHO
the keeper of GB7SO in Gosport for his in depth knowledge of UPS machines. Our engineers on site today caught on cam doing their inspections and restoring the link to GB7MT / PO |
04/02/2022 | VOLUNTEERING
OPPORTUNITY We all have a golden opportunity to help get £250 for the repeater group funds by helping at the "ABP Southampton Marathon" on Sunday 24th April 2022. The event backers Associated British Ports - Southampton, are keen to help groups like ourselves by giving us £250,... if We can let them have 20+ Volunteers! quote their Website: ... why not be a volunteer! We would like to know if
You are up for helping! Please respond to me not them!,.. so I can go
to them and say "The repeater Group has 20+ volunteers" where
would you like us! Hi Viz vests will be available for your protection! Andy G4MYS |