Guilford Amateur Society's 145.250 W4GG Repeater is down

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I thought I would post this because it is a very wide area repeater that some of us here use. htperry had a thread going on that 'other' site once and suggested it because of it's wide area food print and central location. This explains why it was so quiet on there last night and this morning, as well as the increased traffic on the Burlington, Winston-Salem, and Greensboro (GARA) repeaters.

Hello, GARA Members.

It saddens me to have to report that the Guilford Amateur Society's 145.250 W4GG Repeater is down and may be for an extended period of time. I understand that it has essentially served the area non-stop for about 15 years. Initial reports from GAS indicate the repeater may have suffered a receiver failure and since the repeater is 1400' up the tower GAS does not have the ability to simply make a trip to their site and access their machine as we are able to.

I am writing this email on behalf of the GARA Board to let you know that, in the spirit of HAM radio and to show our appreciation to GAS for extending the use of their repeater to us in the past, we have offered the unrestricted use of our VHF machine to them. The W4GSO repeaters are open machines and everyone is welcome to use them at any time, but especially while GAS works through a solution to this issue GAS members are of course welcome and encouraged to use the W4GSO repeaters, namely W4GSO VHF in place of W4GG VHF including for their weekly net, Wednesdays at 8:45pm.

Fortunately any downtime of the W4GSO VHF machine was mostly pre-planned for maintenance and they always made their repeater available to our members in the interim. Also fortunate for us is that we have access to our repeater at a moment's notice so most of our down time has been short lived. GAS does not have that ability.

Also affected by this are the Randolph Amateur Radio Club and Triad SKYWARN who's primary repeater 147.255 K4ITL has been down for about a year now. They are in the same situation as GAS in that the repeater is up on the tower and they do not have access to it. As a result they have been using 145.250 W4GG. We have also reached out to both of those organizations and offered the unrestricted use of our repeaters in the interim. We have always been the tertiary SKYWARN machine and you can now expect to hear the weekly SKYWARN net on our repeater Tuesdays at 8:30 pm. We have not heard back from RARC yet, but you may also hear their weekly net on our machine on Monday nights at 8pm.

In the spirit of amateur radio, please welcome any newcomers to our machine and make them feel at home. We all might make some new friends we otherwise wouldn't have.

73,
Patrick Moore, K2CPR Greensboro Amateur Radio Association
www.W4GSo_Org
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I wondered why it was quiet this morning. I listen in the mornings while drinking my coffee and updating my Google data so I have something to post. Good luck on getting it back up.

Where will you be talking during drivetime now?
 
htperry;n91833 said:
Where will you be talking during drivetime now?
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I figured that a certain someone had finally just chased everyone off. I was talking to K4RCI yesterday who was on echolink as he was driving the postal truck to LA and he finally came on and made a rude comment about not wanting to interrupt a conversation. That's the whole point of "drive time", group talk to pass the time.

I can hit the South Wake 145.210 and the JARS 147.270 repeaters from just about west of Greensboro to work. I will probably spend most of my drive time on the .210 as well as on the W4GSO (145.150) as I a member of GARA, though it is only about 300' in the air in downtown Greensboro. I can also pick up the W4NC which is a local repeater in W-S and they have a wide area one with about an 80 mile footprint on Saurtown Mountain at 145.470 MHz. Guess I will see where the traffic is. i might have to contact some of the regulars off line (email) and see where they would like to hang out. From home, I can also hit the Wilkesboro repeater which gets a fair amount of traffic. My mobile range is better than most people, thanks to the Comet CSB-790A that you recommended.

I am also going to continue to focus on the HF capability as this does underscore one of the weaknesses of repeaters.
 
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I'll check the above list of alternate repeaters and see what I can hear/hit. I was already 75+ miles from the .250 machine.
 
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This was a huge area machine and so was the K4ITL which is also down. This a huge loss.....

They have been waiting for 2 or more years to get the DMR machine up on that tower. It cost a huge amount of money to get the tower workers up on that tower. I believe the elevator on the tower is broken too. The elevator is big plus on very tall towers.

James
 
The W4GG is in every VHF radio I have! I have a lot of them :D

XTS5000,2 XTS3000's ,2 Astro Spectra's , and 3 CDM1550ls+.

I've defected to DMR(NCPRN ) lately though.
 
It's a trade off of great coverage or lack of easy access.
Our club in Charlotte has a repeater at 1500' up on a TV tower. We have to coordinate access with when a tower guy is going up for other service work for the station . Fortunately, the tower guy is a member of the club.
 
ES44AC;n92300 said:
This was a huge area machine and so was the K4ITL which is also down. This a huge loss.....

They have been waiting for 2 or more years to get the DMR machine up on that tower. It cost a huge amount of money to get the tower workers up on that tower. I believe the elevator on the tower is broken too. The elevator is big plus on very tall towers.

James
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A lot of people are going to feel this, especially with both Randolph and Guilford counties down. The area has A LOT of repeaters, but not many with such broad coverage. These are on those really tall towers near I73 and Hwy 220 between Asheboro and Archdale for those not familiar with the area. They're visually impressive when you drive by. Last night I was at the tech class that my wife has been attending and I had a conversation with the instructor, N4VE. He mentioned that the elevator is broken on it and that alone was forecast at about $1 million to fix it. If so, I would think that WFMY would want to get that repaired least something happen to their system and they need it straight away.

in the mean time, for out of area operation, W4GSO has echolink capability, but under the temporary sign of W4CPR-R.
 
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On our tower the guys only use the elevator to move gear and equipment. They prefer to climb. From what I understand, it takes the elevator 1/2 an hour to get to the upper platform. We used to have a ground crew and had to set up rigging to get gear up to where the elevator starts.
 
georgel;n92664 said:
On our tower the guys only use the elevator to move gear and equipment. They prefer to climb. From what I understand, it takes the elevator 1/2 an hour to get to the upper platform. We used to have a ground crew and had to set up rigging to get gear up to where the elevator starts.
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There was some discussion this morning about whether or not it would be more expensive to climb or ride the elevator. As I understand it, the repeater itself is located on a platform at 1500' and the antenna is at 1800' and the elevator is non functional.
 
W4GSO is pretty weak on me. It took me 200 watts just to kerchunk it. A noisy S2 here.
 
htperry;n92703 said:
W4GSO is pretty weak on me. It took me 200 watts just to kerchunk it. A noisy S2 here.
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It looks like it's about 80 miles from you as the crow flies. It looks like it is located at Battleground Ave, and Westridge on a cell phone tower which might be a little tough if the terrain in between is goes high, where I would have been running about half of that when I last hit it. Other people have said they could hit it from Durham, which would be about 50-55 files.

I wonder if Saurtown Mountain would do better for you. It would be farther, but you would have an elevation advantage.
 
80 miles isn't a problem with favorable conditions, terrain. I'll try to remember to try my beam that direction. I haven't been using the beam for awhile and it's disconnected. It makes the long distance stuff easy.
 
To post an update to this thread, the Guilford Amateur Society has created a go fund me page to raise the funds to purchase a new repeater. Apparently one of the crews that service the WFMY tower, for reasons unknown, even though there was a sign on the cabinet stating what the equipment was and who to contact decided to break the lock on the cabinet and in doing so also damaged the door. As a result rain water penetrated the cabinet and flooded the repeater destroying it. The club is trying to raise $5,000 to purchase a new one. The word is that that the owner, Danny Hampton, K4ITL who also runs the PCRN of which this repeater is a part has offered to pay half of the costs. The club has decided against bringing the issue to the attention of WFMY as the TV station has granted them rent free space on the tower for the last 30 years.

I thought I would post a link to the club's go fund me page in case anyone would like to donate to the cause seeing as it is a very wide area repeater that is centrally located such that many of us here would be able to use it.
Link Here: https://www.gofundme.com/repair-w4gg-145250-repeater
 
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