Attention all Allen County & FWRC hams:
Due to impending construction at the Indiana and Michigan Power company’s Robison Park substation, the FWRC voice repeaters on 146.76 MHz and 444.875 MHz and the ACARTS voice repeater on 147.255 MHz and digipeater on 144.39 MHz will be off the air for most of the week of October 30. The exact starting time of this outage is fuzzy right now, but most likely will start on Tuesday, November 1 and continue to the weekend.
Al Burke, WB9SSE, informed the FWRC board of directors yesterday about the move. I&M needs to build a new structure on the exact spot that we have our repeater shack, but has offered us a much bigger and nicer structure inside the fenced substation property, right next to the tower. I&M also informed us that they will take care of any feedline moving that needs to be accomplished for us to set up inside the newer structure. Included in this building is a much bigger uninterruptible power supply for emergency power.
Due do the rather fast timeline, the old FWRC shack, which was donated by Raytheon company back in 2005, will be taken down and removed by the I&M people. The building they are giving us is about 2.5 times the size and much newer, however.
We will try to keep the membership up to date as all this takes place.
Stay tuned for more information!