The Salmon Arm Seniors Amateur Radio Club chat repeater VE7RSA on a frequency of 147.020 + 600 has been re-installed after its visit to Vella Radio where it was determined to have power-supply issues, feeding 22 volts in to the radio.

The solution was to circumvent expensive power-supply repair time in favour of substituting a surplus power supply which Vella provided to the club at no cost.

The downside, if any, is that the “new ” power supply, capable of 100-watts output was too large to fit into the Motorola repeater case, so it had to be housed separately.

Hans VE7BOD, Chris VA7CAC, Simon VE7SHG, and Ron VE7RLE, who together comprise the bulk of the Seniors ARC membership, took the repeater up the hill on July 14. However, all was not well with the re-install when the repeater did not respond to its new power input.

A phone call to Vella Radio brought out Patrick VE7FAT who used his amateur- radio volunteer time in place of a company service call to put things right.

Our success with the repeater was topped off by a visit to the ice-cream bar of the Tappen Coop whose generous and tasty Nestle cones are sought after far and wide.

Please program 147.020 +600 into your radios for solid local chat communications in and around Salmon Arm from the 25-watt transmitter on Kault Hill just west of the Salmon Arm city limits.
All photographs were generously provided by Simon using his Canon DSRL on this his first visit to the VE7RSA site.