On 3/14/24 05:16, Bill Talanian wrote:
To: ALL From: Bill Talanian
Yesterday the tech team set out to improve the microwave link from Santa Ynez Peak to the Red Cross. I performed a simple task by staging at the Vic Trace Reservoir equipment shelter to disconnect the former link during the test phase. While there for two hours I had a lot of time to reflect on the the location and the thousands of hours which contributed to its success as a flagship center for amateur radio communications. To see all this vanish by the end of July is personally devastating. I became more determined and resolute that this should not happen to SBARC. Our group has endured as a club in the Southcoast for more than 100 years without a blemish on our record.
A lot of good memories. It all started with a Motorola tube-type repeater in an outdoor cabinet donated to the Club by Delco. Duplexer was in a home-made wooden box next to it IIRC. Then the upgrade to the garden shed. I'm trying to think if there was an intermediate repeater between the deployment of the Delco repeater and the MASTR II. There was a little bit of political pushback on the whole idea of a Club repeater from some old-school Club members that didn't want SBARC to turn into a repeater club filled with Tech-class members.
During the first week the repeater was operational I was on family vacation in Laguna Beach and worked the repeater from there with a Motorola HT-220 hand-held and rubber duck. Inversion ducting with some lucky timing for me.
Back then, FCC issued separate call signs for repeaters and there wasn't the online database that exists now. We were issued the call sign WR6ANW which led to the nickname of the "Root Beer Box", but before we got the actual license in the mail someone got a lead from FCC that the call was WR6AMW. We had to do a quick reprogramming of the IDer when the actual license arrived.
The first controller was a simple on-off built on perf-board. You could call the repeater phone line and hit 7 for on and 9 for off.
Then there was a Club build of the Cactus-style card cage controller followed by a commercial microprocessor-controlled one.
A lot of effort by many over the last several decades. It would be fun to put together a detailed history.