On August 31st, Peter VK5BE and Nick VK5NJS made another trip to Mount Richmond.
This time, with the aid of a 15m cherry picker, generously supplied by Baxter Hire, they removed all the old obsolete antennas from the top of the disused Victoria Police tower and installed the new SERG antennas for the linked 2m repeater.
A dual stacked folded dipole array for the 2m repeater together with a 16 element yagi for the 70cm link were installed on a new support pole that was attached to the existing tower.
As the old existing coaxial cables tested faulty, new cables were installed & tested OK. Brief testing was done over the path from The Bluff to Mount Richmond using the new antennas with results better than expected.
Further work is still to be done in the coming weeks to complete the cabling from the tower to the Tx hut, followed by the installation and commissioning of the repeater itself.
Thanks go to Tim VK3TIM for his ongoing support for this project.
Peter checked the link to The Bluff (VK5RMG) successfully with 5W and also worked The Bluff via the 2M antenna.