GREAT news for OH2DMR MotoTRBO repeater!

Our DMR-activity group OHTRBO has successfully been running multiple DMR repeaters, but lacking some total coverage for the Helsinki 'Metropolitan' area. We gained a huge improvement in this area recently when the first Finnish DMR repeater OH2DMR repeater was moved from Juhanila TeliaSonera cellular tower in Espoo to a tall tower in Pasila, bit north from downtown Helsinki. The tower is a huge landmark next to the HQ for Elisa, a mobile/data/telco operator, peaking at 100m AGL with the base standing at 31m ASL.

The tower has few antennas left from the analog MPT1327 trunking 'AutoNet' mobile telephone network ran by Elisa (dismantled by us a decade ago) The highest antenna on the tower was a monitoring antenna for the AutoNet-system, a humble 8dBd Kathrein vertical, kindly left there for the greedy amateurs to come and take full advantage of it some day :)

With co-operation with Elisa Radio Club OH2AQ, the site could be used for amateur radio services too.

In the near future a new 70cm FM R.Net repeater is to be installed to the cabined with the DMR repeater. Estimated coverage for the FM repeater is quite similar to the DMR coverage. The site earlier had OH2RUA 70cm repeater installed also.

The roughly estimate of the repeater coverage from Pasila using Radio Mobile Online shows a huge coverage area, which is now proven correct by few distant DMR users.

Cabinet installations are still mid-way, the Motorola XPR8300 DMR repeater and Sinclair Q3220E duplexer are the only ready parts in the cabinet. The duplexer seems to perform nicely with only 2.0 MHz split, with just over 80dB notches. Internet connectivity is next on the To-Do list, and also wiring the RX-multicoupler and TX measurement panel, both visible in the middle of the cabinet.

OH2DMR continues to operate at same frequency 434.575 MHz (-2.0 MHz input), CC1. When internet connection becomes available, slot 1 will be DMR-MARC linked (TG1 WW, TG2 EU, TG24 Nordic etc.) and slot 2 will remain domestic in the OHTRBO network (TG244 Finland, TG8 regional, TG9 Local)

As mentioned above, we took care of dismantiling the Elisa trunking network at 2004. It was the same room where we carried out ten cabinets full of radios and equipment, of which the RX multicoupler and the TX monitor used for the current project are from. So they returned home in some means :)

Comments

solarflare said…
Are the other repeaters due to follow as well, especially the D-Star repeaters?
Nope. D-STAR repeaters with their very low usage are to stay where they are, or decommissioned.