Our mission is to establish a
fully functional UHF repeater and VHF remote base system for
utilization of our membership for service of the El
Paso, Texas and southern New Mexico area.
Further we intend to establish reliable links to the Cactus
Intertie System, Jacks Peak Amateur Radio Association, the
Armadillo Intertie System and Intertie Inc. This is
being done to accomplish the last wish of the late (Marie
W. Smith, W5DPD) from here in El Paso.
New construction is ongoing:
You can view and track our projects progress by clicking on
the Links (Indicated in Blue) below:
Phase I
The Projects initial design
was to upgrade our Repeater to a General Electric Mastr II,
upgrade and replace our Link Transceivers, Power Supplies,
Cavities and install it all in a newer stronger enclosure on
wheels to make it a bit easier to transport and maintain. |
Phase II
Phase II of the project
consisted of a lot of custom sub rack construction, mounting
of the physical equipment, design construction and mounting
of the Diode Isolation Block and beginning the A/C and D/C
wiring in the new enclosure.
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Phase III
Phase III of the project was
the complete disassembly, rework, painting and
reassembly of our newly acquired Motorola T-1500 Series
Cavities for the Repeater.
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Phase IV
In order to progress to Phase
IV of the project we needed some of the non-redundant pieces
of equipment that were currently in use at our Remote Base
Site on South Mount Franklin. Some details on that
trip can be viewed
HERE.
This is of course why our
Remote Base is currently OFF-THE-AIR.
Now that we had the 2
meter Remote and the
Palomar 721 Controller in
hand we could begin fabrication and mounting of a new panel
mount for the 2 Meter Remote, fabrication and mounting of a
suitable panel for the
Motorola T-1500 Series
Cavities and
mounting the Palomar 721 Controller in the new rack.
All of the above of course
required that the D/C power be reworked, due to some new
thinking on where we preferred to mount the equipment.
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Phase V
Latest Discussions and
Negotiations with some of our neighbors on how to best
accomplish our mission has necessitated some additional
links in order to provide some redundancy and to accommodate
some link requirements here on the dividing line between
transmitting high and receiving low for links on one side
and transmitting low and receiving high on the other.
You can view the current thinking on the system interfaces
HERE.
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Phase VI
The additional requirement
for the TCP/IP VOIP Link to Armadillo Inc. and Intertie Inc. in East Texas
necessitated a site with Wide-Band Static Addressed Internet
Connectivity. So, the KA5CDJ (M.A.R.I.E.), (Armadillo, EPT) Repeater System
in North East El Paso was constructed and placed on the air.
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Phase VII
While construction continues on
the NEW Mountain Top M.A.R.I.E. machine our discussions with
the Jacks Peak ARA made us aware of internet connectivity at
the Jacks Peak site. As a result, in interest of
alternate paths, connecting Cactus to the West and Armadillo
to the East we began construction of Armadillo version 3.2 DRIL cards for use between the KA5CDJ (EPT) Repeater and
Jacks Peak. |
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M.A.R.I.E. is intent on
making this a "First Class" system and we are working very
diligently to accomplish this task at hand.
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