A work party consisting of Dorn VE7HDU, Hans VE7OHR, Phil VE7BPH and Robin VE7HMN ventured up Queest Mountain via the Sicamous route on beautiful, sunny Friday, September 22nd to service QMR. The trip up to Queest is always a challenge, but the road was in good condition due to the small amount of rain this summer.

The APRS NiCd batteries were checked and found to be in fairly good condition considering their age, and didn’t require any water to be added. Most of the individual cell Voltages were at 13.6V, but two of the twenty cells measured about 14.5V and are probably close to failure. The APRS transceiver was rebooted and we now have APRS service and telemetry from the site.  You can check the telemetry out at https://aprs.fi/telemetry/a/VE7QMR-1  

There is an description of each channel here:  http://sarc.ca/repeaters/shuswap-arc-repeaters/queest-mountain-repeater-telemetry/

The two year old batteries on the main QMR repeater are the sealed lead acid (SLA) type and are in good condition with an average of 13.6 Volts. The repeater is operating, but is not linked to the other repeaters on UHF and doesn’t currently decode DTMF tones which will require investigation. The Maxon UHF module was removed for testing and may have to be replaced.

It was a beautiful day as you can see in the photos below. Thanks to Dorn, Hans, Phil and Robin.