Just to give you all an update on the performance of repeaters at Mike area. We visited AJK last week and had the opportunity to travel upto Sharda. A beautiful valley which with the onset of winter has turned more beautiful.
Amazing performance by both the bands. i was able to talk to AP2JUR, and AP2EZ from a 140 kms away from Muzafarabad. Last year the signal almost died in Muzafarabad however this year it was a whopping 5.8 S5 and at some places even 5.9..
90% route till Kundal Shahi is covered by VHF band and at one place to our surprise and amusement
only the UHF link was receivable. i could trigger the repeater with VHF but the tail squelch i could receive back was from UHF only. however VHF remained dominant throughout. Later on while discussing it with AP2RF i realised that UHF was only 35W whereas VHF was plus 60.
Anyhow vhf link was accessible uptill 8 kms beyond Athmuqam. then it went dead. The signal till that was prviously a dream for me atleast. This really shows how effective our setup is. One thing that we noted was that there was a bit of desensing/desensitizing on VHF and that needs to be addressed at earliest. Probably by separating the frequencies further to one notch. Repeater though was accessible from Athmuqam but it was only able to click it. Moving antennas further would not be possible hence only shifting/separating frequencies would do the trick.
We also witnessed the same phenomenon at Kutton near Kundal Shahi..... i could click but again no audio. On UHF there was no problem.
I cannot express the feelings i had when we heard AP2GH and probably AP2EZ communicating when we were at the farthest end with absolutely no other mode of communication.
Great going Pakhams.
73s
