Israel
Ham News by
Ahron Kirschner 4X1AT and Ron Gang
4X1MK
SPECIAL REPEATER ISSUE
We hope you
had a good and peaceful Christmas Holiday as well as a pleasant jump into the
year 2001.
Beginning in this
issue we want to tell you the history of the Israeli repeater network. Actually we intended to give you
profiles of three 4X hams that developed our repeater network over the last few
years – those were the intentions.
We had to ring up several radio amateurs that were involved in building
the repeaters in the past – since 1975 – and still active in the upkeep of
these machines. We took quite a
few things for granted, just to realize, as the words of a song from George
Gershwin's opera ‘Porgy and Bess’ –
‘It ain’t necessary so’.
The net result, in the end, you can not tell the present state of
affairs without mentioning the previous 25 years since 1975 till the present
day. By some means it is a
fascinating story which has to be told.
So we start today and hope to bring to light the dates and type of
equipment, some bought, and many received from our great benefactor ‘Motorola
Israel’ and other suppliers and well wishers. The entire repeater system was built by our local hams some
of them experienced technicians, still working today in the upkeep of
commercial repeaters, some of them very good mechanical engineers – building or
modifying the racks. All these
together with manyf other volunteers, installining the equipment in most any
site imaginable. So we start back in 1975:
THE HISTORY
OF OUR REPEATERS
In 1975 4X4TB Shmuel Gal, living
normally in the Tel-Aviv area, became a student at the Beer Sheva
University. There he started his
studies and five years laterbecame an electronic engineer. But Beer Sheva is quite a distance from
Tel-Aviv and Shmulik, as called by his friends, couldn’t make his daily
QSOs. Also in 1975 the first ‘2
meter ‘handies’ became available to the radio amateur community. They were given to the IARC by Motorola
Israel, used equipment that was previously of the Israeli police force. So, as Shmulik had such a transceiver,
he decided to build repeater with 3 ten element stacked yagis pointing to Tel
Aviv, hoping that this would do the trick.
He got together with two
other, highly qualified engineers 4X4GV (today 4X1GV) Emanuel Shalmon and 4X4OQ
Zvi Amit to plan the repeater. At
these time, fortunately for all of us 4X amateurs. a surplus mobile rig by
Motorola, the D43GGV became available.
It was all tubes with a mechanical vibrator power supply to convert the
12 DC voltage to the high voltage required by the tubes. Those transceivers
were crystal controlled and could be switched to 3 frequencies.
At the same time, Zvi, who was an
employee of the Ministry of Communications, had made extensive tests, from all
the sites of the Ministry in the Beer Sheva area and in possession of all the
keys to all these sites, took along the “GGV” in its original configuration, with different crystals, made
reception test with Emanuel 4X4GV.
The transmitter and receiver
could be removed separately from the original housing and built to become
separate units. Two independent
antennas were used. One 10 element
yagi for transmitting and the 3 ten element stacked yagis for reception. 4X4OQ built a duplexer as well as a
comptroller. Thus the first repeater in Israel was installed on the house
Smulik was living in Beer Sheba. It was a fairly large building complex; its
roof edges about 50 meters apart.
At each end one antenna was installed. Every thing in place and tried out – it did work. At that time the only frequency
allocated from the Ministry of Communications, was R7, output 145.775 MHz and
input frequency 600 kHz. down.
Looking back this group of
people, who loved to build equipment, built the first repeater for Israel. Many more followed till we do now have
a network of many repeaters, some of them linked together. More on the subject
in our next issue.
I A R
C REPEATERS
(save this chart!!!)
.
|
Name |
Location |
Freq. MHz |
Shift KHz |
PL access tone |
Power out |
|
R-0 |
Mitzpe-Ramon |
145.600 |
-600 |
91.5 Hz |
80W |
|
R-1 |
Jerusalem |
145.625 |
-600 |
91.5 Hz |
100W |
|
R-3* |
Haifa |
145.675 |
-600 |
91.5** |
100W |
|
R-4.5 |
Haifa |
145.712.5 |
-600 |
192.8 |
80W |
|
R-7 |
Tel-Aviv |
145.775 |
-600 |
91.5 Hz |
100W |
|
R-12A |
Megido |
145.300 |
-600 |
91.5 Hz |
80W |
|
R-12B |
Beer-Sheva |
145.300 |
-600 |
192.8Hz |
40W |
|
R-12C |
Eilat |
145.300 |
-600 |
91.5 Hz |
80W |
|
R-13 |
Yatir (southern
area) |
145.325 |
-600 |
91.5 Hz |
80W |
|
R-14 |
Zefat (Safed) |
145.350 |
-600 |
91.5 Hz |
80W |
|
R-15 |
Givataim (Tel-Aviv area) |
144.775 |
+ 600 |
91.5*** |
100W |
|
R-16 |
Natania |
145.400 |
-600 |
91.5 Hz |
80W |
|
R-70 |
Tel-Aviv |
438.650 |
- 7.6MHz |
91.5 Hz |
100W |
|
R-71 |
Haifa |
438.675 |
- 7.6 MHz |
91.5 Hz |
50W |
|
R-72 |
Jerusalem |
438.700 |
- 7.6MHz |
91.5 Hz |
50W |
|
R-73 |
Zefat |
438.725 |
- 7.6MHz |
91.5 Hz |
50W |
|
R-78* |
Haifa |
438.850 |
- 7.6MHz |
91.5 Hz |
30W |
*R-78 is connected to R-3
** R-3, Send PL 77
*** R-15 Send PL
114.8