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146.940 (110.9)
WD7F Echolink: 1125 IRLP: 3892 |
444.925 (DPL 023) KB7ZZY |
<Click to Enlarge Most Pictures>
LATEST
NEWS: 1 October 2019 |
By popular demand, we now have an official . You can click here or the link at the top of the page. |
LATEST
NEWS: 17 September 2017 |
W0LTL(SK) - Mike Zonnefeld 24 October 1944 - 28 August 2017 |
Mike had been having some medical problems over the past few years with the onset of Parkinson's, however, he had been carrying around an inoperatable pulmonary aneuryism for years. Lillian said he had trouble getting from the car to the house and she had to help him. He went for a nap and when she went to wake him, found him. He had sat up, put on his glasses and took one step toward the bathroom and that was it. Sorry to see Mike go, but if you're gonna' go, that's the way to do it. W0LTL (SK). RIP, Mike. |
LATEST
NEWS: |
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Just how long
has it been? KE5SQC - Randy has been working on his antenna farm
and sent some pictures of that activity so, I figured I'd better get
them posted. Who is that? Joe Camel? |
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LATEST
NEWS: |
It's been a while since
I've posted anything. l want to take the opportunity to welcome a new
member of the BART, KI7JCY - Tim. Tim is about to be employed at
the U of A and they probably are lucky to have him since he's a
Molecular Biomedical Engineer and an MD on top of that. We
hope to hear from you often, Tim. |
LATEST
NEWS: |
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I recently took a trip to the farm back in Illinois and I stopped by Fishook to see KE5SQC - Randy and Mom. He ran up the Jolly Roger just so I could see it. He lives close to the I-40 and when I pulled off, he could see me and directed me to his castle back in the pasture. Anyway, I had a good time visiting with Randy, Mom, his brother Larry and his wife Katie. They fed me burgers and breakfast the next morning. It was a very nice visit. I recommend the Fishook Inn to all our ham friends. Right, Randy? | |
LATEST
NEWS: |
I've just learned that KB7KKU - Basil had passed away on 28 June 2016 from a heart attack. KB7LCT - Betty did not let any of us know, however, I did call her and she seems to be OK, considering. KB7KKU (King Kong's Uncle) - Basil Brashear dead at 86. RIP - Basil. |
LATEST
NEWS: |
Hasn't been much news posted on the BART for a while. Craig came over the other evening and we moved the 440 link antenna from inside the storage room to the roof and mounted it on a tripod. You can see the antenna is pointed to the saddle in the foothills which blocks direct access to a direct path. Also ran a new run of 1/4" heliax and installed a different link radio. The other one was about 1.5K off frequency and would get pretty warm. When we started to string the original coax, it looked like a packrat had chewed on it a bit, hense, the new coax run. It has decreased the popcorn a bit. |
LATEST
NEWS: |
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Looks like Dave has got a start on his shack, but I don't know why he waited until the snow was flying to get started. I guess he doesn't have the correct priorities. | |
LATEST
NEWS: |
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Well, here's a
couple of pictures of KE5SQC - Randy of Fishook, Arkansas doing what
appears to be work. However, looking a the pictures below, it
would appear that he's digging either a square hole to put a round peg
into, or maybe he's playing Whack-A-Mole with Mom. What do you
think? Got any idea what's in that last picture of the hole?
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Nice Job, Randy. Who's gonna' climb it? |
It looks like K8IOU - Cecilia is waving good bye already, but not quite yet. We had a tower lowering party yesterday (Friday) with several folks helping N1DHS - Gary and K7IOU - Dave with the project. Dave had a young friend Mike , a fireman, who volunteered to help with the climbing and disassembly. You can see him holding the gin-pole with one hand (for about 5 minutes) and that just shows you what youth and strength can do! Isn't it appropriate that Cecilia is moving to 8-land? As a side note, the VoIP (Echolink & Irlp) are down on the BART because we had a near lightning strike and took out part of the repeater controller and a few other items last Saturday. Working on that. Helping were KW7RS - Rolly, KB7YLU - Ted, K2MKH - Theresa, KG7HUG - Chris, WD7F - myself, my son John Jr., N1DHS - Gary and Fireman Mike. Oh, I nearly forgot, K9IOU - Gracie. Thank you, Theresa, for taking several of the pictures. Thanks to all who helped and to Cecilia who cooked up the burgers and hot dogs as a reward for a job well done! |
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Yes, it's down! |
LATEST
NEWS: 26 July 2015 |
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The sad news is that K7IOU - Dave and K9IOU - Cecilia are in the process of moving to Michigan so the 224.74 Repeater along with al of it's VoIP links have been taken down. The BART link to the 448.35 has been moved to the WD7F QTH and is in the process of being tweaked to improve the performance and eliminate the popcorn that prevails due to the foothills interfering with the link path. Dave plans to hook up the 224.74 in MI and connect to us here in Tucson in the next few months. |
LATEST
NEWS: 12 November 2014 |
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Important Message Below! | |
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The Fishook saga continues: Letter to K7IOU Dave; I've
been pretty busy here getting ready for Winter and stuff so I haven't been
keeping you in the Loop so to speak. Anyway
we had some exciting news a while that we here in FISHOOK were chosen to
recieve funding for a National Monument of our choice. Naturaly wanting to
be different and still pay respects to some special group, I decided to go
for the project and see what was out there. I found that there is not a
National Monument dedicated to all the HARD work the fellas do on the
Fishing Boats. After a LONG search into the workings of the said Fishermen
and helpers I saw that the guys that do all the BAITING are really the
ones that deserved attention....So I decided to ERECT a Monument to all
the MASTER BAITERS out there that are looked over for ther contribution to
the Nation....With that said enjoy the Pix I send you of the
Dedication Cerimony at the "NATIONAL MASTER BAITERS MEMORIAL MONUMENT"
in FISHOOK Arkansas... There
wern't a lot of folks that turned out but we PULLED it OFF!!!! Randy, FISHOOK
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LATEST
NEWS: 23 March 2014 |
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KB7YLU - Ted and his son KG7HUG - Chris (in the background) were at K7IOU's garage where yours truly and Dave did some work on an IRLP node computer scheduled to be installed at Northern Arizona University attached to the K7NAU repeater. Chris is a junior studying engineering at NAU. We managed to get it hammered into shape enough that it can be returned back North to finish the installation. Maybe we'll have some traffic from up there some day. |
LATEST
NEWS: 16 March 2014 |
Well, well, well! Looks like Ken has won the coveted Chicken Feather Award. I don't think many of those get awarded these days. Congratulations, Ken!
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LATEST
NEWS: 1 Feburary 2014 |
It's official! We have moved the breakfast to Denny's just East of Broadway and Wilmot. The quality had declined and prices had increased so the majority of the folks wanted to try Denny's and this being the 2nd Saturday, we're going to stick with it. See you there! |
LATEST
NEWS: 17 January 2014 |
Our TEP RFI troubleshooter KD7AYQ - Gary retired a few months ago and TEP has not been too interested in replacing him. They are aware of their responsibility for EMI and RFI, however, their replacement guy doesn't seem to have the required skills. Please call their RFI Representative, Scott Dickerson at 520-275-9563 or the TEP Shop at 520-745-7119 if you have any noise. The more they get pestered, the more they'll realize they need to take care of these problems. Plus, if they don't the AZ Corporation Commission and other entities will get on their case. So...CALL "EM!
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LATEST
NEWS: 15 January 2014 |
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Our man, Rick - N3RO, did a total remodel of his shack for the new year. Looks pretty neat and functional, of course. You can hear Rick nearly every day on the BART when he connects on his way home for lunch at 10:00 AM Tucson time. You can find Rick on QRZ and he also has a website: http://www.n3roradio.com Check it out! |
LATEST
NEWS: Tuesday, 28 December 2013 |
The ailing 900MHz BART repeater was feeling ill and required some new duplexers and a total redesign of the band pass filters and other things and now it appears to be working better. The cans are behind the nice black panel with the silver screws. Can't see much, but they're there! |
LATEST NEWS: Tuesday, 10 December 2013 |
WA1BZQ - Bruce |
Congratulations to Bruce - WA1BZQ who passed his extra at the VE session the other evening! He had been an Advanced since about 1966 when he was 16 years old. And he'd been studying for only 47 years! |
LATEST NEWS: Sunday, 26 May 2013 |
With a great deal of frustration and repetitive actions the 927.8875 repeater is one the air and integrated into the BART system. The problem was just too many different colors of wires. Anyway, it seems to be working pretty good. It is located at K7IOU's place and seems to have good coverage. Break out your 900 machines! |
LATEST NEWS: Friday, 24 May 2013 |
KC7JFC -
Tony |
Some time back the 94
hicupped when I turned the power off to see if it was guilty of creating
noise on 75 meters. When I plugged it back in, it wouldn't
work. In the process of troubleshooting it, I needed to find a
Squelch Gate Card to see if it was the repeater or the controller.
Tony and KD7UIZ - Don were there and I mentioned that I had a spare but
couldn't find it. From that, Tony went on a hunt and yesterday at
the Village Inn, he surprised me with important spare MSR-2000 cards he
had scrounged up. There was an R-1 Audio card, a Station Control
card and TWO Squelch Gate cards.
Thank you Tony and whomever provided you with the circuit boards. Maybe it'll be stable now that we have spares. |
LATEST NEWS: Saturday, 18 May 2013 |
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The crew got together
and completed the 2nd stage of the tower project and for the most part
finished the job. The 220 antenna was moved to the top as opposed to
being located at the same level as the 900 antenna. The top guys
were moved down, the semi rigid heliax was insatalled and the 900 machine
was turned on and is operational. W1KSZ - Richard was the first
contact followed by KD7UIZ - Don, seems to work OK. Next will be to
interface the machine to the BART. Afterwards, K7IOU provided
hamburgers. KB1EDU - Chad took off before the burgers. You
missed it, Chad! I think Fred ate yours. |
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So the other day, Dave - K7IOU says "What is that boatanchor stuff doing on the BART page" So, I thought about it awhile and decided to create an AM page. Announcements for hamfests and other related items will still be posted as required. Ok, Dave? |
LATEST NEWS: Saturday, 11 May 2013 |
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Since we're going to have an addition to the BART repeater system, a 900 MHz machine, Dave thought it best to install a beefier tower to hold the additional monster 900 antenna, so we had a tower party yesterday. You can see it in what looks like a junk pile. It's at least 12' long. Why so big when a quarter wavelength is about 3 inches? Dave and I dropped the
old tower the other day and he had already made a new mounting plate, part
of it compliments of KE5SQC - Randy, and had two sections of the Rhon 25
standing already. It was a bit warm, but a steady breeze kept things
fairly cool and at least the tower is up, guyed and the 220 antenna is
on. School is still out as to whether it will be moved to the top of
the tower or not. N1DHS - Gary and WA0RTO - Fred did the climbing
duty and it went pretty well with no incidents, if you get my
meaning. KW7RS - Rolly, KB1EDU - Chad and WA1BZQ - Bruce helped too. |
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LATEST NEWS: |
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Our man K7IOU - Dave decided to present a BART participation award to our Arkansas Echolinker KE5SQC - Randy . Of course, you all know that Randy lives in Fishook, Arkansas, Population 2. So, here is the award: | |
The picture doesn't do it justice
because it's really a LARGE "fishook". Here's a picture of Randy
and Mom holding the award to give a better
perspective. <Click Pictures to Enlarge> |
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When Dave asked Randy about Fishook, here's what he said: | |
I hope this helps you to understand that I know what you
have asked and hope that what I have answered, is, the proper
answer in as far as I understand what you have asked. Although
there are other answers to your very interesting question, I am sure,
this only represents one of many other ways there may be to answer.
Therefore I assume you understand that this answer will, most likely, only
propagate other thoughts on how to answer your question. Randy, Fishook, Arkansas |
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One of our newest Jerry Bob's
Breakfast attendees AE7YQ - Bill
gave me a motherboard
so I can build a spare computer for the IRLP/ECHOLINK/WIRES
system. Recently, KB1EDU - Chad
donated a computer
to the cause. He had one that'd been rolling around in the back of
his pickup truck for a while and he mentioned that he was gonna' take it
to the desert and use it for target practice. I talked him into
giving it to me and I managed to coax it back to life. So now, the
computers on the BART will probably last a long time now that there are
spares. |
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LATEST NEWS: 18 November 2012 |
Yesterday was the 30th running of El Tour De Tucson, a 111 Mile and other Fun Rides bicycle race. Local hams take responsibility for the manning and coordination of many aid stations and also assist the riders when needed. The BART 146.94 repeater was used for handling traffic in Sector 2, primarily the North East side of Tucson. Everything went smoothly and it appears that it will be doing it again next year. Of course, the Echolink, IRLP and WIRES plus the links to the other repeaters were all shut down for the event. |
LATEST NEWS: 6 August 2012 |
So the door bell rings and it's the mail lady and she's got a small box. Turns out it's from Fishook, Arkansas. "What the heck is this?" I'm wondering. I opened it and in there was a thank you card from "The guys in the morning", KE5SQC - Randy, K7GEL - Ken, N3RO - Rick, AB7IC - Tom and VK3JRE - Rex. It said, "Thanks for all your work and expense. A gift to show our appreciation for all you have done." I can only assume it's for the "BART". Well, it's my pleasure. Only thing is, where am I gonna' find a belly big enough for this belt buckle? What a deal! Look at that case that Randy probably sewed himself! The thing is 4.5 X 6. I guess I'll mount it on a plaque. |
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20 April 2012 | |
I guess it's been a whil since I posted anything here. Our buddy Randy - KE5SQC up in Fishhook, Arkansas sent some picture of his place to Ken - K7GEL. Here they are. |
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23
October 2011 |
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1 December 2009
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29 October 2009 I can't believe how long it's been since I've posted any news. Anyway, here's some good news. Christine and Bob (N7ZQK) are starting their weekly computer talk radio program on KVOI The Voice of Tucson (1030) beginning on 14 November from 11:00 AM until 12:00. Christine is a big supporter of the B.A.R.T and has contributed several times when we've been in need for old computers. So, please listen in and support Christine and Bob. Here's the link: <CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE ADVERTISEMENT> |
K7IOU
had a malfunction in his 224.74 machine and spent some time
troubleshooting it and finally discovered the problem with a squelch gate card. He felt so
good about it that he decided to tempt fate and do a "re-organize" on the repeater,
link radios and VoIP system computers. It looks so neat that a gremlin might come in and try to
do something . We'll see ! |
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<Click
Picture to Enlarge> |
30 June 2008 I
just had to post a picture of my recently revived Johnson Valiant AM
transmitter
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Dave
- K7IOU has made a few changes to his system including the Echolink
connect prefix and disconnect. The connect prefix is * (star) and the disconnect
is now # (pound). As
you might already know, the N7JND simplex node is connected to the BART
24/7. Lee, WB9TPD has re-established his Echolink Conference server. To connect
to Lee's server, just DTMF 111 and you'll be there. Enjoy ! |
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5
March 2008 |
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Dave - K7IOU has added an Echolink node to the BART system. The node number is 22474 (not coincidental) and the access code to connect is: *C and the disconnect is ##. What that means is you have to DTMF a *C followed by the node number you want to connect to. Dave has some shortcuts installed and probably will share them with you. Have fun !! |
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Well,
it finally happened !! The Kenwood repeater is now
installed,
replacing the old <Click Pictures to Enlarge> |
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A
project is underway to replace the 448.350 repeater on Mt. Lemon with
another |
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16 May 2005 24 August 2004 Would you
believe that an "Up Front" article complete with a picture Click HERE to read all about
the MSR-2000 conversion! |
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HISTORY: BART was originally organized by
Hobart Paine, K7CC (SK). The original |
BORDER |
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BART is a
group of Tucson Amateurs who operate and control the 146.34/.94 VHF Repeater current located in N.E. Tucson near the crossing of Harrison Road and Snyder Road. To be more exact: N 32.17.39 W 110.47.28 Grid Square: DM42oh Power at XMtr: 90 watts Antenna: Ringo Ranger ~50' |
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BART, and
the repeater as well, was rejuvenated to include some new users of the .94 machine. Bart Paine, K7CC, started BART many years ago, and he is the last of the ORIGINAL members. You can be a member too. Just use the .94 repeater. No dues, no fees to pay. If you're so inclined, send me a photo and I'll post on on the Rogues Gallery! |
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The
repeater is currently connected to WIRES (Wide coverage Internet Enhancement System) as Node# 1128. It
is connected to the IRLP (Internet Radio Linking Project) The repeater is now connected to EchoLink Node# 1125. |
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Here are some pictures of the new repeater |
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CONTROLLER & 3 PORT SWITCH OUT OF THEIR CAGE |
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CONTROLLER, SWITCH IN THEIR RACK |
This page is continuously under construction.
Check out the Rogues Gallery photos of some of the
BART users. We have some real "handsome" Dudes!! Maybe a Dudette or two!
Over 200 pictures posted ! |