WR5ABR
The Beginning
The original WR5ABR location was a great site...Geographically.
WB5VBZ and WA5QVD work on the antenna mounting brackets.
Nothing associated with WR5ABR could come in contact in
any way with the building roof.
The pools on the roof were used by the biology classes.
The grill (highlighted above) was literally a grill.
The temperature inside the building was almost always very close to the temperature
outside. Temperature extremes caused some strange repeater
quirks not only due to winter cold, but also severe summer heat.
As stated below the first photo, location wise, the site offered great repeater coverage of
the San Antonio area. The site was plagued with some very strange
intermodulation problems since it was just across the street (both north
and east) from major two-way radio sites both public and
private.
Additionally, the next building over supported a broadcast FM
antenna which caused some additional problems. It seemed that we
were constantly adding and/or tuning filters (both bandpass and notch).
Getting access to the building roof to work on the repeater was
compliated and cumbersome. One day we encountered the man who was
in charge of the machine shop located in the building. He had a set
of keys that we could use any time we wanted. Roof access was much
easier after that.
There was only one power outlet in the small room where the
repeater was located. After visiting the site multiple times and
finding the repeater unplugged, we "got help" through an electrician
friend to add another outlet. Our friend in the machine shop
made a clamp that required specific effort to remove the plug from from
the outlet. We never found the repeater unplugged after
that.
This first WR5ABR site was demolished in May 2012.
Note: The WR5ABR antennas are still on the building
more than two decades after relocating to another site.
Bill WA4ZFP designed and built a voice ID unit for WR5ABR based on
an old 8 track tape player. Bill rewired the player to stop (rather
then switch tracks) each each time it encountered a metallic splice on
the tape cartridge. He also set up timers so the ID would identify
WR5ABR as required by FCC Rules. A local air personality recorded custom
IDs imitating the voices of: President Jimmy Carter, John Wayne, Elmer Fudd
and others. President Jimmy called the repeater
a "peanut whistle." John Wayne demanded that
you "listen good." Elmer Fudd told you to be "very quite." Many
visited WR5ABR to "kerchunk" the repeater just to hear the custom
IDs. Because 8 track tape players were not designed for other
that light use, the voice IDs soon disappeared and the regular CW ID
returned.
Repeater Log Excerpts
11/06/80 - Upgraded 220 Power
Amplifier.
11/17/80 - 2 meter transmitter intermittant, especially
at night.
11/19/80 - Determined cold weather is causing transmitter
problems. Must heat repeater when it gets
cold.
12/04/80 - Installed heat lamps with termostat control in
bottom of cabinet. Will dress up cabling if heating
works.
12/16/80 - 220 repeater transmitter problems. Blown final
output power transistor - Replaced.
02/05/81 - Repaired 220 antenna
element.
03/12/81 - Control relay contacts dirty. Replaced with new
relay.
03/16/81 - Installed new antenna mast so 220 antenna can be raised
higher for linking.
05/05/81 - Installed heliax on all antennas. Turned on
voice ID again. 2 meter intermod problems back
again.
06/04/81 - Returned to CW ID.
06/12/81 - ID Audio level
problems. Reset connector.
02/10/83 - Desense problem with 220
receiver.
05/24/83 - Repaired dead 2 meter receiver.
07/15/83 -
Moved 220 repeater to new site.
Because numerous open 2 meter repeaters had become available for
usage since WR5ABR went on the air, when repeater coordination changed from
30 kHz to 20 kHz, the WR5ABR 2 meter coordination was dropped. The
cost, time and money to do the change was also a factor in the decision.
The 2 Meter Repeater and Duplexor got moved into storage.
Even though WR5ABR on 220 mHz and 450 mHz was moved to
a new location, the original site was was not vacated of Amateur Radio
usage. Harry N0CCW set up an inter-linked digipeater cluster on
145 mHz, 220 mHz and 450 mHz that was in use until just before the
bulding was demolished.
This is the new antenna installed at the new WR5ABR
site located
near the intersection of Datapoint Drive and Fredericksburg Road.
Some new cabinet views in new location.
Here is a look at the duplexer and repeater
in the new cabinet.
Here is a close-up of the repeater controller. Note the
switch to change between voice and CW IDs.
The new repeater controller on the workbench.
New repeater controller ID close-up.
The new repeater controller allowed repeater status to be
sent using the CW ID. When a status command was sent to the
controller, it would only send the ID characters of the
features that were "on." If you look closely at the middle of
the ID board you san see the red header that "told" the ID which characters
needed to be sent.
Because there are 8 characters in the WR5ABR ID (DE WR5ABR),
there were 8 possible status indicators available for use. To avoid
confusion, the space between DE and WR5ABR always was sent as part of the
status request. Since there were two R's in the ID, spacing of the
characters sent become important. For instance, if features 1, 3, 4
and 8 are on, the CW sequence sent in response to a status request would
be:
D[space][space]WR[space][space][space]R.
It was important to know the feature status of the repeater, because WR5ABR
was linked and interconnected to various devices and locations over the
years.
Very strong winds (possibly a tornado) were encountered at
the new site. In fact, the winds
were stong enough to bend in half a
tall communications tower about half a block away
from the
site. You can see in the photo part of what the winds did to the
control antenna.
Here is what the winds did to the main
antenna. Fortunately, parts on both sides of the antenna in
the
photo above were found during a thorough parking lot search. The
antenna is still in use today.
Here is the temporary antenna. Note the damaged control and main antennas
at bottom of photo.
Coming...A move to a new site.
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