Equipment Information and Specifications

Equipment on the air in the air . . .

The repeater at the IDS building is a very rare high power MSF5000, the model number is b84cxb. This is the only 225 watt repeater that I have ever seen available for sale, the repeater was purchased new in 1996 by the Madison, Wisconsin police department. They moved to newer Quantar Astro equipment and a company in upstate New York purchased it for resale. They listed it on EBAY, my favorite fleamarket. I bought it right away and had it shipped to my house.

It then was transported to Dan Karg’s (WRØDK) house where it was repackaged into a 6’ outdoor cabinet.  A Celwave model 526 duplexer was added along with lightning protection equipment. If you look at the pictures of the equipment it starts out at the bottom with a high capacity fan bringing cool air into the bottom of the cabinet. The next item is the transmitter/reciever and controller. Behind that is the Celwave duplexer, it is mounted in the cool air path from the fan.

Above that is a fan panel that moves a continous stream of cool air upwards to the PA and driver amplifier and power supplies. Before that however is the very necessary isolator and load that is required in dense sites to prevent intermodulation from being created within the transmitter. The PA and driver have circulators built in from the factory. The next item above the tripple fan panel is the PA, it is rated at 225 watts continous. The MSF5000 manual indicates that in normal test conditions that it should be capable of producing 280 to 310 watts.

Above the final PA is mounted the driver PA, it looks like a PA from a 110 watt MSF5000. They are mounted in front of the two power supplies that operate the station and PA and driver. At the top of the cabinet is the power inlet and lightning protection equipment.  The antenna is a 455-5 -- Super Stationmaster™ Omni Fiberglass Antenna.   Factory Specs

All of the packaging of the repeater equipment was done by Dan Karg WRØDK, acknowledged by many as “the” expert on repeaters.  Without Dan my repeater system would not work as well as it does.