It's official, the recently upgraded 2 Meter repeater (Vertex VXR-9000 - installed last September) has been interfaced to an external Arcom RC210 three port deluxe controller. The Tech Team spent some long hours working out most of the kinks this past Tuesday evening resulting in a new sound and a large feature set that will be available to club members.

We still have a few flaws that need to be ironed out like CTCSS (PL tone) encode for full TSQ and the squelch burst at the end of each transmission. These issues should be resolve this coming Saturday.

But gone is the overly loud CW ID and Courtesy Tone - what we have now is a "smart" repeater that will tell you the time, ID in voice (do those voice ID's sound familiar?) allow for custom courtesy tones, give special announcements (Tail Messages) and allow Weather and Info Net modes. These and other new features will be explained in an upcoming club newsletter. And all members will get a new Visor Card with DTMF codes and instruction on how to access the features.

Our thanks go out to those who made this all possible. Many hours of hard work have been put in and will continue to be put in as more Tech Team projects are implemented.

Let us know what you think. Send your comments to Dave - KE0NA at ARRL dot net.