Recently, we took the 2m and 70cm repeaters on Centennial Cone out of service for a couple of days, to improve the interconnect between them. Both machines are functioning well now. Bob – KE0SJ installed a transmit delay board, so anyone hitting the machine without using PL will need to wait about a half-second after keying up, before speaking.

However, there is an ongoing problem with an intermittent signal triggering the 2m, which we have so far not been able to isolate. There have been some reports of other repeaters having a similar problem as well. The upshot, until we, or someone else, can figure out where the noise is coming from, is that we’ll probably have to leave the PL tone requirement on for the 145.280 machine. We’ll continue to turn it off at times, to see whether the problem has simply gone away, but that doesn’t seem likely at the moment. We’d sure like to leave it off, for the benefit of hams operating older rigs without PL capability, but for now, we advise everyone to just use the PL.

We hope to have updates on this situation soon, but the nature of the beast, being intermittent, means it could be a while.