Our mission: install a new home for the repeater on Arch Cape (Onion Peak), the result of a grant from DHS that the Clatsop County Office of Emergency Management obtained on behalf of SEARC.
A lot of SEARC folks were involved in this project.
Dale K7FW, Project Manager
Carl KI7RJD, Dave W7PDQ, Ellen AA7EN, Jay KK7HDR, John KK7HAB, Lora KE7ZFQ, Ove KI5BUG, Ralph AG7FE, Richard K4JDI, Rick Hudson Cannon Beach EM, Tyler KK7TIY. I have probably missed a few, as I was not there for every day of this build. My apologies to anyone I missed; let me know and I will add you here!
Photo Credits:
Dale K7FW, Dave W7PDQ, Ellen AA7EN, Ralph AG7FE, Richard K4JDI
In each gallery below, click on any photo to see it bigger, and then to scroll through that gallery. Click the small “X” in the upper right hand corner to get back here.
Gallery index:
What was there
Part 1: Container Build in Tolovana
Part 2: move from Tolovana storage site to Arch Cape
Part 3: Wire it all up!
Part 4: New microwave connection with the hub on Megler Mountain.
Part 5: With a new tower the initial job will be complete . . . for now. More to come . . .
Here is what was there:
One person literally cannot get inside. If it needs servicing and it is raining, you are getting wet. The batteries are charged by four solar panels, and in the winter and the spring rainy season they never get a full charge so they don’t make it past the first few minutes of the weekly net check-ins. And since this is the link between the Cannon Beach repeater and Megler, when it goes silent so does Cannon Beach.
Through a grant from Department of Homeland Security that the Clatsop County Office of Emergency Management obtained on behalf of SEARC, we purchased a 12′ Conex box and generator. SEARC will be building a new tower next to the box with a new VHF antenna during the summer of 2024. When the installation is complete, the little green outhouse that used to contain the repeater, and the old tower next to it, will both be removed. If you would like to help with the labor or funding of this project, contact president@w7buhams.club.
Part 1: Container Build in Tolovana
Part 2: move from Tolovana storage site to Arch Cape
No captions needed here. I have a series of videos to stitch together of the drop, and one day I may actually do it.
Part 4: New microwave connection with the hub on Megler Mountain.
- Day 1: Jay KK7HDR and Ralph AG7FE installed the new microwave dish at a spot where there is no obstruction in the line-of-sight to Megler . . . in spite of the clouds that day. Dale K7FW and Dave W7PDQ, who was off-site but in communication with Dale and with the receiving dish on Megler, got it close enough to prove that it will have a good connection once the wires are in place to the new container.
- Several subsequent trips up: Four wires, including a fiber optic cable, were fed through the orange conduit 325 feet to the dish. The wires were connected at each end. Again with Dave monitoring over the intranet from offsite, the linkages all worked!
Part 5: With a new tower the initial job will be complete . . . for now. More to come . . .
Tower build: the first three photos are mid-summer, just before the fire warning season started. The rest are late October. Present for the concrete pour are Carl KI7RJD, Dale K7FW, Jay KK7HDR, John KK7HAB, Ralph AG7FE. There were several other trips up in October to continue the controls inside.
Our last trips this fall will be to move the existing antennas from the old tower to a temporary mast on the top of the first new tower section. Next spring sometime we will add the two remaining tower sections, guy wires, and the new commercial-grade antenna that we just purchased, thanks to the generous donation from one of our members.
<more photos coming as this project gets completed>