Simplex Repeater to test your aircraft radio operational in SE Qld

[Kyle Communications]

Hi All

 

The first simplex repeater in Australia is now operational from Ocean View which is west of YCAB it is up at 1700 ft so should have extreme range depending on your height above ground when flying. Range is expected to be somewhere between 100 and 300 nm maybe more if your radio has enough power.

 

This repeater is available for all aircraft to use be it microlight,ultralight or GA even RPT

 

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 try you can even try it with a HH aviation radio from home if you wish to see if you can access it

 

Mark

 

 

[JimG]

Great work Mark, certainly sounds like a good way of really knowing your own transmission quality.

 

Cheers

 

JimG

 

 

[Phil Perry]

Tried it Mark. . . . . can't get into it from here. . . . . . ( ! )

 

Deucedly good idea though ! I don't think that the Radiocommunications Agency would let us do that here in Blighty,. . . . . No imagination at all ! ! !

 

Phil

 

 

[Kyle Communications]

I just heard a foxbat testing. It must have been from inside the hangar or on the ground behind hangars although I would have expected a stronger signal. If you hear a lot of noise/static coming back with your voice that means you have a weak signal into the repeater. Once you get out on the runway or in the air the signal should be nice and solid if not then there maybe a issue with the antenna or the radio with output power or radiation. My base radio produces a nice solid signal the handheld produces a noisey signal from here at the workshop

 

 

[ave8rr]

My base radio produces a nice solid signal the handheld produces a noisey signal from here at the workshop

Just waiting for some "Skip" or is it VHF tunnel propagation to test repeater from KNX (YPKU) Mark.

 

 

[Kyle Communications]

A bit of meteor scatter or maybe some sporadic E I think might do it ....would be a record though

 

 

[Phil Perry]

I just heard a foxbat testing. It must have been from inside the hangar or on the ground behind hangars although I would have expected a stronger signal. If you hear a lot of noise/static coming back with your voice that means you have a weak signal into the repeater. Once you get out on the runway or in the air the signal should be nice and solid if not then there maybe a issue with the antenna or the radio with output power or radiation. My base radio produces a nice solid signal the handheld produces a noisey signal from here at the workshop

Sorry Mark. . . .

 

I didn't mean to make light of your efforts with jocularity. . . . and I appreciate the return humour. . .!!! LOL ( I hte tht abrviatn, bt it sets the mood !. . ) I Am guessing that YCAB is Caboolture ?. . . From previous posts where you indicated your approximate location ? I guess there is going to be a list somewhere on Tinternet of all the Aussie 'Y' codes. . . . I have not yet looked it up as I probably won't need it for a while anyway ! We used to have a pretty good repeater on a hill not far from Brisbane, on 2 metres, which had an incredible range, . . . it's been a while so I can't remember where the thing was situated. . . .and then when UHF CB on 400 odd Megs happened, the Phillips Company financed a repeater for that as well, ( Although this was in the Melbourne area. . .) and I was regularly employed doing mods to many Phillips FM 320 CB radios so that the good buddies could use the repeater, I think it was something like channel 1 input,- - -ch 40 output, by using the squelch switch for duplex operations,. . . but this was a bit of a long time ago. . . I wonder if UHF CB is still around ?? 450 Megs CB never happened in the UK, but they came up with CB on 934 Megs ( ! ) yes I know. . . . and this didn't really take off, rather like helicopter flavour potato chips ( now they only sell "Plane" ) as the cabling and antenna technology was beyond ( apparently ) most non - geek people to get their heads around . . .! But the Aussie 430 meg stuff was really good, and outstripped the Ham repeaters by a long way in vehicular mobile range at that period in time. ( I know that there are now some really GOOD international comms availbel on the Ham bands on Vhf / Uhf though, just have not got involved. . . . Phil ( G4 OHK )

 

 

[Kyle Communications]

Hi Phil

 

I like the humour

 

If you worked for Philips back then in Melbourne you probably know Derm Geurin and Michael Justin. Two nice blokes they are still in the industry but doing sort of different jobs. The repeater in Brisbane was and still is the 147.000 repeater on the top of Mount Glorious it has just been refurbished finally with a new repeater after all of those years being a Hamtronics american thing it is now a Tait T800 100 watt. UHF cb was started in Brisbane by Philips putting up a Channel 1 repeater at Mt Cotton it started it off up here, UHF cb here is HUGE there are millions of them, every farm has them and every single truck running the highways. The splits are 1/31 and 2/32 up to 8 repeater channels. The ACMA has just a year ago split the band spacing and instead of 25 kHz it is now 12.5khz so there are 80 channels for UHF CB. but still only using the same 1 mhz segment.

 

The Simplez repeater stuff was born out of UHF years ago the farms used to put them into a radio and put them on a hill some 20 or 30 km away from the homestead this then gave double the simplex range from the homestead without the cost of putting up a duplex repeater. The ACMA eventually outlawed them for some stupid reason but the modules are allowed on commercial bands. Hence the idea of using it on the aviation band. Although the airservices guy didnt have a clue initially what I wanted to do he thought I wanted to put up a duplex repeater until I had to explain it all to him.

 

UHF cb does work very well in this country but of course not in mountainous terrain but we do have a lot of flat areas especially out west

 

Mark

 

 

[Kyle Communications]

Phil

 

If you are into ham radio still and especially Dstar I own and operate the VK4RDS Dstar repeater on Maleny about 40km north of here and am always listening on it. I have it connected to REF001C most of the time in the mornings but you can direct connect of course. I am always listening when here in the workshop. VK4KZK or VK4OI are the callsigns although KZK is the one I use while in Brisbane as most people know me as that I use the OI call sign when up at my farm or on HF. Oh and I didnt answer before YCAB is Caboolture it is about 5 km north of where I live and my Sav is hangared so not far. Our Ocean View radio site is 10 nm WSW of YCAB this is where the simplex repeater is sited as well as CH5 emergency UHF cb repeater and also CH 8 UHF cb repeater as well as a ATV digital TV repeater with output on 446.500 and inputs on 1250 mhz 2.4 ghz 3.5 ghz and 10 ghz also a output on 2.4 ghz. There is also a repeater we have supplied for the local Caboolture radio club on VHF as well. And of course the commercial radio equipment that makes us the money to run the site

 

Mark

 

 

[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

 

 

[cscotthendry]

Mark:

 

I tested it out with a handheld from home (Russell island) and got a quite intelligible response, given the distance and transmitting from the ground.

 

 

[Kyle Communications]

Thats pretty good for a HH thats around 42 nm or 80 km. I am surprised at how much cabin noise was coming through my transmission this morning I am used to the audio on my camera which is of course directly from the headset audio. There are some filters in the simplex repeater board that can be adjusted maybe they are accentuating the noise. I will look into it. I will get a mate to fly my aircraft and listen directly to his tx audio from the ground with a HH and then get him to switch to the repeater and see what the difference is. As I said before there maybe some tweaking required

 

 

[Ballpoint 246niner]

Mate great to hear your voice back in the air today- I went to test it today but forgot the kHz bit, old timers kicking in, sorry I missed you, been making the most of the mornings before the storms roll through. Great again to watch big red climb out with the best radio bloke in the business at the controls. got my xpdr cable today so squawking soon.

 

Remember Inglewood next weekend.....

 

 

[Kyle Communications]

Hi Niel

 

I was actually heading down to see you today to find out when you were free but I realise you would be making hay while the weather is a bit better. Just so happened Bill was there a guy had wanted to do some solo time in his aircraft..one of his guys down from the ISA I saw him in the carpark so asked him what he was doing he was hanging like a stale bottle for an hour so we went straight down and committed aviation. It was really good to get back in the saddle I really enjoyed it too. I tested it with my radio inflight and looks like I need to drop the mic gain back in the Xcom it is picking up too much cabin noise. I am going up to the repeater site tomorrow morning the mute is opening a fair bit on the repeater so I will tighten up the squelch a bit on it.

 

Mark

 

 

[Kyle Communications]

I cant go this weekend got to go up the farm this weekend...the Mrs commanded it so Mark has to go

 

 

[Kyle Communications]

Oh I see its the anzac day weekend....cool I will be going if the weather is good

 

 

[Ballpoint 246niner]

SavTastic!!!