VE3RLR Gets a New Home

Over the fall of 2019 the Rideau Lakes Amateur Radio Club finally had to find a new home for our repeater. The old site (formally a Town of Smiths Falls equipment maintenance facility purchased by a private company as a manufacturing facility) was still available to us, but it was clear that as the new owner expanded his business the repeater and tower were becoming an inconvenience that had to be worked around.

After an extensive search of many potential sites, we were able to conclude an agreement with the Railway Museum of Eastern Ontario to locate our repeater in their facilities. The site is an excellent location for a repeater site. Our tower does not look out of place due to the history of railway communications. This common history with Amateur Radio is the foundation upon we hope to build a long and mutually beneficial partnership.

We would like to thank the Town of Smiths Falls for their generous funding grant to help with the costs of constructing a location to house the repeater.

We also thank Mallory Day and "Inside Ottawa Valley" for her article about the club.

73
Richard
VE3YSH

VE3RLR Gets New Fusion Repeater

Over the months of December and January the Rideau Lakes Amateur Radio club was pleased to introduce a new technology to our repeater complex. We purchased a Yaesu Fusion repeater system and a number of mobile and handheld Fusion radios to equip our membership. We would like to thank Radio World for their superb support in fulfilling this order and are looking forward to welcoming them to our Flea Market this year.

Update. This fall we upgraded our VHF repeater to DR-2X Fusion II and moved our DR-1X equipment to UHF providing automatic mode (digital or analog)  support on both repeater frequencies.

The Fusion repeater has finished tests and familiarization for our club members and is now installed as our VHF repeater:

VE3RLR 147.210 + PL 151.4Hz AMS IN/OUT
VE3RLR 442.750 + PL 151.4Hz AMS IN/OUT

The AMS IN/OUT means that the repeater will automatically adapt to the mode used on the input frequency. If you call the repeater using FM it will transmit using FM. If you call the repeater using C4MF (The Fusion digital mode) it will transmit using C4FM.

Richard
VE3YSH