[W5SFA] Proposal to review at the March Meeting

[Gary Baldwin]

Greetings to all.  The following message is information on the Houston 
Repeater site.  Please review Roger's proposal and we can discuss at our 
March meeting.  As a club we need to come to a resolution for this 
issue.  I appreciate the input from all that responded with their input 
over the past few weeks.  Looking forward to seeing you at the meeting 
at Joe's Italian in Brenham on the 31st.

73

Gary - KF5ZRT


Club Members,

We’ve received pretty good input on the discussion about the downtown 
Houston repeater location (and more is welcome).  At this point I’d like 
to put a specific proposal before the club that we can discuss, and 
hopefully vote on at the March meeting.

To address the question Kat raised about retaining the 146.96 Mhz 
frequency if we move to the new Wallis location,  I contacted our 
coordinator at the Texas VHF/FM Society.   The answer I received was yes 
– we can simply relocate the repeater site and keep our current 
frequency, since it will not interfere with any other repeater using 
that frequency.  This simplifies the move quite a bit, since we will be 
able to use the downtown Houston ”cans” and rack at the new location.

So this is the specific proposal I’d like the club to discuss on March 31:

*/Move the downtown Houston repeater location and related equipment to 
the new Wallis site as soon as it is ready, retaining the 146.96 Mhz 
frequency.  Replace the old Icom FR-3000 VHF analog repeater with a 
DR-2X Fusion repeater. /*

I hope to achieve the following goals by making this move:

·Better efficiency:  repeater locations will be geographically closer 
together, easily  accessible and more easily monitored

·Easier maintenance by having standardized equipment and setup; also 
remote access to diagnose and correct problems without making a house 
call at the repeater site

·An improved, overlapping coverage area: If you can’t hit one repeater 
you may be able to reach one of the others.  Also, the Wallis location 
should still easily reach into west and southwest Houston.

Assuming the club endorses the above, we can then deal with secondary 
things like:

·The disposition of the downtown Houston location

·Deciding if we still need the Columbus site (Wallis may be able to 
provide equivalent coverage in its place, but we don’t know that yet)

·Improving upon our setup by internet linking the repeaters for C4FM 
digital communications to reduce lag, and use Wires-X for remote access 
and linking an analog repeater.

·Installing the 146.96 repeater at a temporary location during the 
interim (this will enable us to test internet linking and keep the 
repeater active while we wait for Wallis to become available)

This is probably one of the bigger decisions the club has made in recent 
years, so comments and feedback from all members is appreciated.  Please 
try to make the club meeting on March 31.  Or if you can’t make it, 
please make your thoughts known on the reflector.

73,

Roger N5RWK
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