Well we are certainly paying now for the great weather we had in the past. We have had a lot of snow in the Denver area as others have had and as of this writing I gotta go out and shovel another 10 inches. BUT, that has allowed me a lot of inside time for my flight simulator hobby and other SkyHubLink activities.
I wanted to start off this addition by saying thanks to Mark ADØWA for the fine work and help getting our Durango SkyHubLink repeater on the air. While we are looking at probably getting a better HIGHER site here soon, Mark is operating the repeater from his home SE of Durango and we are actually getting really good coverage in the city and surrounding neighborhoods. Plus it reaches down the valley into New Mexico almost to Farmington I am told. Stand by for more news this year on this one! Here are some pictures of the setup Mark has in Durango, and thanks for helping SkyHubLink down in the SW part of the state Mark! Extremely NICE install in the rack.
The repeater antenna at the ADØWA QTH, and the repeater, filter, and raspberry Pi link to SkyHubLink
The Durango repeater is on 145.28 with a PL of 103.5. Be sure to check it out when you get down into the area and holler at Mark. We also have planned for this year a analog repeater on Vail Mountain, hopefully an analog repeater
covering the Yampa Valley from Steamboat, and several other projects including the SkyHubLink becoming a 501 C 3 nonprofit entity that will enable a lot of other good things to be announced soon. We try to keep the webpage updated on a very regular basis. So be sure to check it often for announcements and other new things coming soon. Also when I was out at the site I took these pictures below of the Sterling Colorado repeater site (145.295 pl 100.0).
The building housing the Sterling repeater, and the VERY BUSY tower the repeater antenna is on. Thanks to Kent NØONL for putting this repeater on SkyHubLink and the coverage up in NE CO. BTW, this repeater is also liked via a radio link to Holyoke on 146.955 with the same 100.0 hz PL.
Meanwhile, up on Pilot Hill just east of Laramie WY, the 447.400 repeater is in its new home in another building on the east side of the hill. 447.400 Wires-X Fusion is on air on its newly moved antenna as well. At this time the antenna is mounted basically at ground level, but has a commanding view to the east towards Cheyenne and as Daryl (who did the moving) W3ORR has reported the coverage has increased greatly and is solid to the N, NE, and east of Cheyenne in southeastern Wyoming. I am told that it covers up I-25 well past Chugwater and Daryl has been using the repeater up there extensively. He also runs the node link radio for Wires-X from his QTH in Cheyenne (Thanks Daryl!) We hope to actually get the antenna further up on the tower later this year but the tower will need some work before climbing is safe. Thanks to all who are helping to make this repeater system possible up in the SE Wyoming Cheyenne/Laramie area!
The 447.440 Wires-X repeater antenna at the base of the Pilot Hill Tower
Here is another ham radio setup and D-104 mic seen in the Netflix series “DC Legends of Tomorrow. I see these mics used as props SO MANY TIMES!
Here is this month’s featured Hamshack! Kathleen WØKPH in Pueblo is a brand new ham, I am sure you have heard her on the SkyHubLink repeaters! Kathleen has gone all out with her well appointed shack and is active with a lot of fun ham radio activities, including helping some of the NETS on SkyHubLink with the Netlogger logging software. Thanks Kathleen and welcome!
Each month now I will be including this new link in my “Hamshack” newsletter. It is the link for the latest from CrisAlexander W5WCA and the Crawford Broadcasting Company’s Engineering page. Scroll down and you will see links to the latest editions of the company engineering newsletter “The Local Oscillator”. Cris has been publishing this for many years and it has a lot of very interesting information about what goes on at CBC engineering, but also very informative information about cutting edge technology that CBC employs and interesting adventures that their engineers experience. I wish I had thought of this ages ago in the writing of my article here. See the latest offerings by going to this site:
https://crawfordmediagroup.net/crawford-engineering/
Click HERE TO CHECK OUT the latest BDR.net articles at: https://www.thebdr.net/articles/thisweek.html
