We also had a problem with a 454 pager. Quintron with a 1/4 k amp. Only one in the metro area had a spur, but that one traveled as the PA cage changed temperature. Got a hold of the paging company, and they turned each one off until we saw the spur go away. Final tube had been replaced and not properly neutralized.
WalterH --- In [email protected], "Tom W2MN" <w...@...> wrote: > > We had a pager spur problem with our repeater (no pl). The problem would > come and go. We determined it happened mostly with time of day (outside > temperature). Sometime it was just a short 1 second event and sometimes it > would hold for a bit more (maybe 2 -5 sec). We setup a satellite multimode > radio (actually dial in the frequency with widest bandwidth setting) and > monitored the repeater input with a tape recorder and vox. We did this to > capture the audio so we could listen to characteristics and THE CW CALLSIGN. > We captured enough of the callsign that we were able to indentify the whole > call (and freq) from the FCC database. > > With that, we were able to monitor the repeater and the pager for hits. Yes, > it did hit some times and not others. The reason was, it was caused by an > unstable spur that drifted up and down the ham band with temperature and the > amount of pager traffic. It was also hitting other repeaters as it drifted > but most of the other repeaters had pl. > > There was a chain of pagers using the same freq and callsign and we had to > figure out which tower it was. We used a beam antenna and chased the spur > up/down the band until we were able to get a definite direction. The next > step as to visit the site AREA with an HT and just scan the ham repeater > input freqs during the likely time of day. Bingo, the spur was loud and > clear!. > > Of course the pager owner was in denial but being a pest for a couple of > weeks got the problem removed. They claim it was a spur in the final PA that > had been serviced just at the time the problem started. They replaced the > PA. > > Hope this story helps. > > Tom >
