I played with 10 meters for about 40 minutes tonight, mixing between SSB and CW. No activity even to be heard. I did find out that I can now push at least 55 watts into my 10 meter "hamstick" vertical without creating any interference. I just made a very slight adjustment to the coaxial cable location, and even CW (which used to be worst, and came through my computer speakers loudly) causes no problems. Weird. Six meters is still terrible on SSB and CW, though as far as interference goes.
I also played with my 440 MHz (70 cm) Yagi. I found that it doesn't like to get wet, as it was raining off and on today and the SWR was almost too high to use. Once it dried out, the SWR dropped to almost nothing.
I thought that was doing amazing things with the Yagi when I got S8 and S9 back from the UHF repeater in Crown, MN (442.925+, 127.3) - - about 29 miles away. Later I put my "good" whip up, and got pretty much the same results, though. This makes me think that it was new. A check of RepeaterBook showed that, yes, the repeater was in "testing". This is kind of exciting. It's a repeater that looks like it will reach the metro area clearly, and will also clearly reach St. Cloud, Mora, and Pine City -- on UHF.
Where the Maple Lake 145.470 HandiHam repeater used to be, I heard some talk and repeater beeps, but it was below S1 and I couldn't make it out. I though that I heard one guy say "Rush City", but I'm not sure at all. It could be the Austin repeater (doubtful), or it could be that the frequency has been re-assigned already to some place about 60 miles away and this is a new repeater. I'll have to keep on eye on RepeaterBook.
The Baldwin WECOMM repeater (145.250-, 110.0 PL) is back up and stronger than before. It took 20 watts, but it came back with S8 once I hit it. Previously, it was S2 at 50 watts. It seems geared more toward "emergency" use, but it has very impressive transmission coverage. Combined with the UHF WINET network, it's now easier to reach the entire State of Wisconsin from the Twin Cities than it is to reach places like Annandale, MN less than 40 miles from me.
I've also noticed that the WINET UHF repeater at River Falls - about 40 miles away - is coming in stronger lately. It used to be about S3 or 4 a few weeks ago, but now it's S7 here. Maybe a new antenna or site. Score another one for Wisconsin, but it's still easier to use the repeater here in the metro because they are all linked together. But I could easily see someone in, say, Zumbrota or Lake City using that River Falls machine to reach the Twin Cities on UHF. It's too bad that Wisconsin can't link all of our rural areas. It's also too bad that Minnesota can't, either.
That's what's up. What's down is the new HandiHam VHF Maple Lake repeater (145.230-, 114.8 PL) that was never connected to the network. The UHF HandiHam 444.325 machine was down for a while tonight during the TechNet, and the whole network seems to be having trouble staying connected at the moment.
UPDATE: The Maple Lake .230 is not down. Someone changed the PL tone and didn't update the record. I started trying the most common CTCSS tones this evening when I heard an ID on the repeater that supposedly wasn't up. The new tone is 127.3, which is the one used by the "emergency" repeaters in the area.
The TCRC's six meter FM repeater is still down. The only working six meter repeaters in the State are now in the northern reaches - Grand Rapids and Mahtowa (south-west of Duluth).
UPDATE: The Forest Lake VHF (146.730-, 114.8) repeater is lot stronger recently. I get S8 here, and it ker-chunks with only 5 watts. Also, The UHF repeater in Big Lake (443.600-, 114.8) is reaching here in Plymouth with S8 now, which is a lot better than usual. And there's a VHF repeater in Avon, MN (147.105-, 85.4) that's around S2 when it comes back. Want more? The Wyoming, MN (146.895-, 82.5) VHF repeater is S7 and comes back with 5 watts. It used to be S4 and require 15 watts to ker-chunk. Even more interesting is that I heard the Aitkin VHF (146.805-, 146.2) repeater ID this afternoon, though it was scratchy. I didn't get an S-level because I was driving at the time.
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