Your readability is less than 1

[eightyknots]

The bandpass cavity arrived from my mate down the Gold Coast this afternoon. I will see if I can get it installed later this week or on the weekend. A couple of pics to show the unit in the rack tray and the size of the cavity

Mark

In January, my dentist told me I had a h-u-g-e cavity and he charged me quite a bit to fill it. But the bandpass cavity is really large!

 

I hope all goes well with the installation, Mark

 

 

[Kyle Communications]

Here is a pic to show what a bandpass cavity does. Basically it creates a window fr the radio transmitter this protects all other radio services above and below of it the high point at the top lets the receive and transmit signals pass the sloping down sides at the left and right correspond to frequencies above and below the actual transmit frequency of 131.375 mhz

 

 

 

 

[Gentreau]

Well done Q !

 

.

 

 

[Kyle Communications]

Hi All

 

The Simplex repeater is installed and operational. If you have a hand held radio and you are within range from home then by all means give it a whirl and try it. The repeater is 1700 ft above sea level so any aircraft flying at around 1700 ft I would expect at least 100 nm probably a lot more as there is a lot of other factors to consider as well as transmitter power and antenna swr/tuning at 131.375 mhz.

 

Pilots can test while taxing or stationary or when flying. Obviously your distance will be much great when flying.

 

Operation

 

This is so simple. All you need to do is to select 131.375 on your radio then push your PTT button and say a sentence or two so long as you keep it to less than 30 secs then let the PTT button go and after around 1 second the repeater will send back to you your complete radio transmission as it heard it with a pretty good reproduction. If you hear squealling or lots of ignition noise or no audio at all this means YOUR radio in the aircraft has a problem and NEEDS to be rectified ASAP

 

Please give it a whirl It may need some tweaking as when things go up to site there usually needs to be some fine tuning done but from the testing I have done from the workshop here some 22km away it sounds and works great

 

Mark

 

 

[Kyle Communications]

A few pics of today doing the install.....the one with the edge of the container look hard and you will see the "visitor" we had while doing the install...his name is Joe Blake the red bellied black snake...I think he thinks he is the guard dog there

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[cscotthendry]

Ha! Missed it by That much! I was up flying in that area yesterday. I thought about tuning the freq and trying it, but didn't. I might try it at home from the handheld. I don't expect to get much from that, but it will be an interesting test.

 

Will you put a notice in the magazines or would you like me to do it?

 

 

[Kyle Communications]

Well today I did a check flight in my Sav. The first time I have been up in more than 4 months. I went there to see if Neil was free today but when driving in my instructor happened to be sending a guy off for a solo flight so he was at a loose end and he came with me to check me out.

 

So what a better way to actually check the system out. I have way too much cabin noise coming through. I did it while taxing to 12 and also while flying out over Bribie Island. I can hear myself fine and the signal strength is good and solid into the simplex repeater but there is a lot of cabin noise coming through with it as well so I will see how I can lower this. I know my cabin is noiseyer than most Savs as I do not have any carpet in it to keep the weight down. I think there is a lightweight sound deadening foam rubber from Clarke rubber I might try. The repeater will show the difference for sure

 

Mark

 

 

[Cosmick]

A few pics of today doing the install.....

Good to see Danny hard at work

 

Regards

 

Mike

 

 

[eightyknots]

Well today I did a check flight in my Sav. The first time I have been up in more than 4 months. I went there to see if Neil was free today but when driving in my instructor happened to be sending a guy off for a solo flight so he was at a loose end and he came with me to check me out.So what a better way to actually check the system out. I have way too much cabin noise coming through. I did it while taxing to 12 and also while flying out over Bribie Island. I can hear myself fine and the signal strength is good and solid into the simplex repeater but there is a lot of cabin noise coming through with it as well so I will see how I can lower this. I know my cabin is noiseyer than most Savs as I do not have any carpet in it to keep the weight down. I think there is a lightweight sound deadening foam rubber from Clarke rubber I might try. The repeater will show the difference for sure

 

Mark

Perhaps something like this could help? http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/appages/soundproofinstall.php

 

 

[Alpi]

Tested my radio flying around the top end of Cape Morton today and pleased with the result. Thanks for facilitating this Mark.

 

Greg

 

 

[cscotthendry]

Tested mine on Wednesday from just after liftoff from Watts Bridge and again over Mt Mee. I was surprised at the noise level in my transmission, but still happy with the readability.

 

 

[Kyle Communications]

That is what I am looking at Scott. I have the same on my transmission. I am using Zulu 2 headsets You can hear me fine but also a fair amount of cabin noise. yet a friend in a Sav his sounded great but has older non amplified David Clark headsets. I am trying to decide what the issue is. I know I had to turn the mic gain down quite a bit on the Xcom radio to suit the Zulu 2 as they output a lot more level than the standard headset. The other think I am looking at is the software filters used inside the repeater module. If I test the unit from my base radio here it sounds perfect what comes in comes out but when there is a lot of noise with the signal like cabin engine noise it seems to get amplified much more by the repeater module.....its a work in progress....not to mention the interference on frequency that is coming in too. Had a shot at air services last week they gave me some frequencies to look at for the third order intermod issues. If I find there are some there will be a frequency change'

 

Are you going to Inglewood?

 

 

[cscotthendry]

I might try turning the mic gain down on mine as well. I'm already having an issue withe the pax headset unsquelching the intercom when I'm at full throttle. You can also turn the gain down on the headset itself and I might play with that also. At least we have a system now that we can actually tell how the tweaks are affecting the transmissions.

 

If some people's transmissions are coming through without noise, wouldn't that suggest that the noise is not at the repeater end?

 

Unfortunately, I won't make Inglewood this year...family commitments. I am hoping to make Toowoomba though. Are you going to Toowoomba on the 5th?

 

 

[cscotthendry]

Dialled up the repeater at 6,500 just north of Warwick and got a pretty good signal. It gave me confidence in what I'm transmitting.

 

Anyone else tried it yet?

 

How about sending in your locations and let's see how far this thing can be used.

 

131.375

 

And don't forget to tell your buddies about it too.

 

 

[Cosmick]

Dialled up the repeater at 6,500 just north of Warwick and got a pretty good signal.

That's app 80nm, excellent. Yeah great tool, I'm local works great, best feedback re quality of signal.

 

 

[cscotthendry]

I've been thinking about the quality of some radio comms, for some time as I've heard some shocking radios while out flying. Some have so much noise, the transmission is unintelligible. Some have such poor strength that the transmission is inaudible even when nearby. I usually tell these people that their transmission was unreadable, but rarely get any responses from them.I've thought about setting up a repeater on an unused frequency that pilots could transmit to, and the repeater would re-transmit what they had sent. This would give them an indication of how their radio is performing.

 

I know that it is normal to do a radio check before flying and that there is always the option of calling the area controller for a check, but at the field where I fly, often I'm the only one there and I'd rather not bother a busy controller for a radio check while he's handling airliners.

 

Thoughts? Comments?

 

BTW just to head off the "but what about your radio...?" I might add that I'm pretty sure it's not my radio as I have recordings of received transmissions from my aircraft and when I ask for radio checks, I usually get 5's from ground and other airborne recievers.

Mark:

Just wondering if there was any update on the status of the repeater.

 

 

[Kyle Communications]

I just received yesterday a couple of more simplex modules from the USA...so hopefully if all goes well it will be back up this weekend. The original looks like it had failed. I have it in a different radio this time it is in a Icom A200

 

 

[cscotthendry]

I just received yesterday a couple of more simplex modules from the USA...so hopefully if all goes well it will be back up this weekend. The original looks like it had failed. I have it in a different radio this time it is in a Icom A200

OK, Great. Looking forward to having it back online. Thanks

 

 

[Kyle Communications]

Finally had some success in getting the simplex repeater going. This time it should be far better in reproduction than before. Suffice to say not easy to get a radio going on the air band with these things this maybe the reason they have not been done before. Basically technical issues with designs of several radios I tried to get the module to work. The unit is now fitted to a Xcom 760 thanks to the great help from Ken at Xcom and the owner Michael. I have had it running this past couple of days testing on other frequencies and it all seems to work much better than before and also keys much better. It should be installed sometime tomorrow back up at Ocean View so anyone flying around or even on the ground give it a try...not sure on the time yet as I have a mate going up there doing some work on our microwave mesh system so he will hook it up. 131.375 mhz is the frequency so please give it a whirl and let me know how it goes

 

Mark