Oak Ridge Amateur Radio Club

The "88" Repeater


Early in December 2014 the "88" repeater was noticed to be inoperative. Bill Mills and Denver Berry went there to see what was wrong. They found that a thief had broken into the building and removed one of the two batteries. Here are some photos of that first trip, taken by Bill Mills on December 7, 2014.



This repeater's operation is temporarily suspended.








Denver and Bill have gone as far as they can using their truck.




Get into the ATV...




...and go the last little bit up the "road."




Extra guy wire -c




The roof (rot?) -c




Underside of solar array




Old coal company repeater -c




Old junk again -c




Door hinge -c




Door rust -c




Solar panel (two 80-watt sets) -c




Door open, new cabinet ready to go in




Offloading the new cabinet




Solar charge controller -c




Duplexers -c




Duplexers -c




Repeater chassis -c




Repeater chassis -c




APRS Digipeater -c




Repeater front chassis -c




Repeater receiver (on 146.28) -c




The tower




Closeup of working antenna




APRS antenna




Old lock -c




Old broken hasp (thief entry point) -c





On December 14, 2014, a larger group went to visit the site again, this time to effect a repair. Here we see the "fixit" work group:



From the left - Chris Olka KM4AFH, Carl Lyster WA4ADG, Denver Berry KK4YHN, Larry Hensley KB4ITS, and Perry Kermicle KK4LZF. The photo was taken by Bill Mills KA4RPN.




The weather was brisk and frost covered the area.




The group went as far as possible in their vehicles.




The final couple of hundred yards of the trip involved a difficult path as seen here.




The guys' exercise for the day - just getting started.




Eureka! We see the building.



And we see the tower.




A rack with the old equipment. This has been there for 10 years.




Clearing of brush has started.




The cabinet is being installed.




Here we are looking into the cabinet.




Clearing now underway.




Working on the new cabinet.




Inspecting the solar array.




Cabinet in place.




Debris cleared.




Overview of the cleared area.




Working on tower ground.




More work on tower ground.




New batteries in the cabinet.




Cabinet now sans traffic control stuff.




The innards that were removed from the cabinet.




In spite of low level of sun, we have nearly an amp of current into the batteries.




Perhaps this new hardware will discourage future mischief.




Installing the new hardware














Hardware installed.


The photos above were all taken by Bill Mills. Chris Olka did some documentation as well:













































If you will take a close look at the bottom of that image you will see the GPS coordinates.




Enter those coordinates into Google Map and see the repeater.



The 88 repeater as seen by satellite !   Image was taken during November of 2013.