Sunday, May 25, 2008

First 2m QSO's were a blast!

The day my license showed up on the ULS (May 21st, KC9NRN is on the air!!) I set my 746Pro for the FRRL 2m repeater and said "KC9NRN Listening" after I heard a break in the current conversation and got back........ nothing... I was thinking, why aren't they responding?? I called out again during a break and nothing, now I'm thinking I can't hit the repeater so I verify the input frequency and pl tone and everything looks good so I call out again and nothing. Me and a few others suspected the repeater wasn't getting my pl tone but since I never used the FRRL repeater, or any repeater for that matter before I didn't know what to expect from it.

I ask my wife to listen on our scanner on 147.210, she heard nothing so I figure ok, switch to simplex and send directly to the output frequency and she heard me LOUD and clear (sorry hon!) so she turned it off and I began calling "KC9NRN Testing" and also calling out that I was using simplex. I finally got a response from KC9NJI and then shortly after a few other guys who heard me from pretty far away. But, no matter what I tried when using duplex with the correct offset and pl tone nobody could hear me, or more accurate the repeater couldn't hear me. After a while I decided to perform a reset of the 746Pro and try again, success!!

It’s been working fine ever since! Now that that has been resolved I am going to be working on a new antenna system. Not having a large backyard is hampering what I’d like to do. If we stay at our current QTH I may purchase a crank up tower, I’ll be discussing it with the guys at the FRRL on 2m and during the next meeting.

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