|
On October 6 a team of volunteers went to the repeater site in the Blue Mountains at Spout Springs altitude
5300 ft. It was cold and foggy at first then later a wind came up and cleared the fog out.
The goal of the team was to provide some badly needed repairs to our building. The building was built
in the early 80's or possibley even earlier I'm not sure. The repeater association was created and incorporated in 1982.
About the only exterior maintenance in all of those years related to the building was painting and that was done a long time
ago, I was there but don't remember the date.
Following are some pictures taken by a couple members of the team. Comments are provided at the bottom
of each picture.
The team from left to right are Lee Neth KD7MQM, Gary Schmitz AD7CQ, Jeff Stidham AL1Q (back), Jack Jensen WA7SDV, Mike
Tesky KC7CCK (President) and Marc Shaffer KC7NXX (Vice President), Carol Tesky KE7AUP was the photographer.
Three members of the team were not members of the SSRA, two of them Lee Neth KD7MQM and Gary Schmitz AD7CQ are members
of the Tri-City Amature Radio Club and Jeff Stidham AL1Q lives in Walla Walla. Honorary memberships for 2007-2008 were
presented along with a letter of thanks sent via snail mail.
The SSRA truly thanks the whole team for their fine effort to preserve the building and special thanks to the three that
were not members at the time of the repair.
Note the fog. This is the building before significant work was accomplished. The siding was in bad shape
with woodpecker holes, a rotted out floor joist right under the door. The door was weathered and in bad shape along
with the door hardware.
A new pre hung door was installed along with new lockset. Note the building sits on 4 x 4 stilts and under the building
is a battery box holding the emergency power batteries.
The area under the building including the battery box was enclosed. An access door was fabricated and installed.
President Mike KC7CCK stated that replacing the rotten floor joist was a major project.
Replacing the rotten floor joist was quite a job. They had to jack up from underneath in order to insert the replacement
material. It now looks plenty substantial.
Work in progress. Note the antenna tower is directly behind the building. You may note there are some hard
hats in the group. It was reported that from time to time ice would break loose from the tower guy wires and fall to
the ground.
President Mike KC7CCK took this picture of the building earlier in the year when he went to see what was needed in the
way of repairs and plan for the work party. Mike is commended for his hard work. Gathering all the materials took
a lot of time and effort.
Note the building sits on stilts 4 x 4. Under the building is a battery box containing the emergency electrical
supply for operation of the repeater during power outages which occur when trees fall on the power line especailly in the
winter. The building and tower are subjected to the worst kind of weather. Snow, on occasion, is 8 to 10 ft deep
meaning to get into the building would require digging down to the door in spite of the fact that the building is on stilts.
Work in progress. Note a tar paper sublayer was applied prior to installation of the corregated painted metal siding.
Jack Jensen WA7SDV is pointing to a badly corroded bus bar to bad the connected had been broken. That means if
we had a power outage the repeater would not have emergency power. Jack is planning to replace the buss bars possibly
on October 20,2007. As far as I know the batteries have never had to be replaced and were probably installed in the
80's.
Project Complete
|
