Thursday 11/11/04: Our first indication of trouble was that the repeaters were down, although we didn’t realize at the time that it was lightning caused. “Not to worry,” Monty said: “it's probably just a blown fuse like the last time; I'll
be up there tomorrow on a job, so I'll just drop by the site and change it.” Famous last words...
I got a call from him that evening: “the 2 meter antenna took a lightning strike and the top couple of feet are missing, the link radio, UHF repeater and the controller are down.” Do you want to go up with me and help out?”
“Sure.” It can’t all that cold, I thought.
Saturday 11/13/04: Monty was able to borrow a snow cat so we could go up to the site. The day turned out clear but cold, with a light breeze. Glad it wasn’t snowing. It turned out the road was in great shape all the way up to the turnoff to the site, but that last 1/2 mile was virtually impassable due to snow. So we untrailered the Sno-Cat and headed up. When we opened the door, we were greeted by the odor of burned electronics.
While Monty was dismantling the link radio, I took a look at the controller. Connecting my Laptop to it, I found (even though the LED indicators on the outside appeared normal) that the controller wouldn’t talk. Inside, I found one LED on the main board that was blinking. “A watchdog timer,” I thought? I reset the controller, then initialized it a couple of times to no avail. Monty suggested pulling port cards to see if it helps. “I was just about to think of that,” I thought, grinning. After pulling three or four cards, the controller woke up and started talking to my laptop, so we tested the cards and found several that appeared good, and put them in. I reprogrammed the controller, and it seemed to be operating normally.
In the meantime Monty was replacing burned boards on the link radio. It still didn’t work, so the damage was much more extensive than anticipated. Setting it aside, he took a close look at the UHF repeater, but determined that we didn’t bring nearly enough parts to repair it either.
When we arrived, the temperature was 23 degrees and nearly calm. When we decided to pack it up, the temp had dropped to about 14 degrees, with a stiff breeze. It was definitely colder than a well digger’s ass. Since we were much too cold to do any more work, we loaded up the link radio, UHF repeater, along with all our tools and test equipment and got in the nice warm snow cat for the trip back to our vehicles (yes, I drove my little red car!).
Despite the damaged antenna, the 2m repeater was up and operating, with the circulator dissipating the reflected power from the antenna.
It will be replaced this spring when the weather is warmer.
During the following week Monty went back up with a newly repaired link radio. He got it installed and set the levels close enough to be useable before being forced to head back down the hill due to the extreme cold and wind.
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