MORE PROBLEMS AT M1ABD.

M1ABD went off the map at about 1700 Hours last night. I made the trip up the hill this morning to see what the problem was. It appears that once again the power supply had been interrupted but had came back on before the computer had reset itself.
I have now put a UPS and Surge Protector unit in the power supply line to the computer. It will not keep the computer running if the power is off for a long time, but should smooth out the power supply.
Only time will tell!

Here is a picture of the new UPS in place.

M1ABD was not on the map when I looked first thing this morning. A check with www.aprs.fi showed that the last beacon was at 0715 Hours this morning.
This afternoon I drove up the hill and found the computer switched off. I turned the power back on again and it re-started itself.
There must have been a short power cut this morning and the power returned before the computer had a chance to reset itself so that it would re-start when the power came back on.
All is working normally again (touch wood).

While things are a little bit less hectic, I decided to take a drive up Bullbarrow Hill and swap the (very old) VDU for a (Newish) Flatscreen monitor.  Here is a picture of the new installation:

It took longer than I thought it would as I had to fight my way through lots of big cobwebs and then remove the bodies of dead birds that had obviously got in somehow and could not get out.
All appears to be working well and the screen if a lot easier to see.

Having replaced the TNC and the U/S aerial, I was still baffled as to why G0ROZ-3 did not appear on www.aprs.fi.
The station was Digipeating and sending out beacons. Looking at the paths of stations that had been digipeated, G0ROZ-3 was shown in the packet path. Even so, aprs.fi was not showing packets being digipeated.
After some research and digging around, I found that the station ID had been set to G0R0Z-3 (Golf Zero Romeo Zero Zulu dash Three). Checking with aprs.fi showed all the beacon packets under the callsign G0R0Z-3.
I must have set it to this when I took the new computer up to site.
So wearing my embarrassed face, I took on the holidaymaker traffic and took another trip up to site. Callsign has been changed to G0ROZ-3 and all is well with the world again (Touch Wood).

Faulty Aerial at G0ROZ-3.

Still not happy with the performance of G0ROZ-3, Paul G1ZKJ and I paid a visit to site today. The problem appeared to be that it was not repeating beacons from stations that were not nearby.
First of all we checked out the software and could not find a problem. We then checked the cables and the radios and they appeared to be okay. Next we checked the aerial. A check of the SWR showed that it had a maximum reading. We checked again with a second meter and had the same reading.
I was not happy as this was a new aerial that was only put up at the beginning of the year.
We did not have a spare aerial with us so Paul suggested that we use one of the old Job ones that are still on the mast.
The first one we checked had a SWR of 1:5. The next one we checked had an SWR that hardly moved the needle.
so we hooked the radio to it and the system burst back into life again.
It is now digi'ing packets from stations as far away as Portsmouth and Bath. I could even talk to my own station directly, which has not been possible for some time.

Here is a Selfie of Paul and I on the roof of the hut looking pleased with ourselves!

G0ROZ-3 has been missing from the map for a day or two, so today I took a trip up the hill to see what was what. The computer had locked up and was just showing a black screen. A re-boot solved the problem and G0R)Z-3 is back on the map again.