Upgrades to Allenspark Repeater:

After the repeater was installed at AFPD station 1, it worked flawlessly until the floods in September of 2013.  There seemed to be some sort of interference, but it was intermittent and seemed to disappear when the weather dried out.  During the next 3 years, the problem would come and go, but we really couldn’t pin it down to anything in particular.  The system was being desensitized by something in the area that prevented operation unless you were very close and used a lot of power.  It was getting to the point that the repeater was somewhat unusable and we started doing nets on simplex and repeater depending on if you could get in or not.  Finally we had a breakthrough.  In February of 2016, the problem disappeared during a power outage in the Allenspark area that saw the repeater functioning normally, while Station 1 was on the backup generator.  In the next couple of weeks, we were unsuccessful in locating the interference with any certainty.  The next idea was to move it out of town.  Station 5 was somewhat isolated and had recently been completed.  There was a backup generator on site and was available as a new location for the repeater.  In July 2016, we installed a temporary antenna and moved the whole setup over to the new location.  To everyone’s relief, the problem did not follow.  Not only was the repeater functioning perfectly, we also had better reception down into the Raymond / Riverside area.  A few weeks later, CCARC approved the move.

September 2016 - Steve Coles, Bill Ellis, Steve Koenig, Ueli Hauser and Bob McDonald installed antenna rack on the peak of APFD station 5 and permanently mounted the antenna.  Money for the Unistrut rack was provided by ANEN and was made large enough to support a second antenna that AFPD would like to install for better coverage of the area.

June 2017 - Bob McDonald, Steve Coles, Bill Ellis, Dave Sharpe, Jim Clements came together to move the repeater from the floor standing cabinet to a wall mount unit to get the equipment off of the floor and out of the way of fire equipment at the station.

May 2018 - Bob McDonald, Steve Coles and Bill Ellis Finally got the duplexer off of the floor and installed a grounding block and suppressor on the antenna feed line.

The Pics below are of the 2nd and current location of the Allenspark Repeater