A big thank you to the crew who volunteered their time to get the VO1BT Holyrood repeater operational again. The tower (which was already due to be replaced) lost its top half in the March wind storm.

Despite a cold and windy day (-15 wind chill!), on April 19th, we were able to put some temporary measures in place to get VO1BT back on the air using the lower half of the tower and some alternate antennas.

If everything goes according to plan, we will be returning on a much warmer summer day to erect a new tower and perform some additional upgrades! This temporary fix should tie us over for now.

Also, a repair was made that brought the repeater output from around 1 watt to about 22, so you may notice an improvement even with the lower height.

For a bit of history about this site, the next tower will be the 3rd here for a ham repeater. The one pictured is the second, which was put up in the 80s. The concrete for the original tower is located behind the shack. Also, if you look closely you can see the original small shack and the larger part (with the peaked roof) which was built on afterward.

Miraculously, the falling tower did not take out our electrical service!

Chris & Joel (VO1FMJ) on the tower rigging the temporary antennas. This picture does nothing to show the strong winds and -15 windchill! Mark VO1MRK supervises from the ground.

Doug uses a SiteMaster to sweep the lines and antennas. A faulty antenna sends Chris back out into the cold and up the tower to swap it out! We’re thankful the shack has a heater.

Chris weatherproofing those connections.