VK6RMW Photographs

The original VK6RMW in the centre of the rack took up a lot of vertical space. Based on the VHF Group's FM transceiver the repeater work okay and was replaced with an FM880 and re-housed in its own cabinet outside of the commercial hut. This type of physical designed worked well in terms of access to each part of the repeater, as only a particular cover had to be removed to gain access without having to remove the repeater from the rack. With increased commercial need for rack space the repeater had to be removed from the rack and was placed under the bench to the right.

 

This is where VK6RMW is housed today in its own cabinet bolted to a concrete pad. Mains power is provided inside the cabinet. A Sun roof was fiited shortly after this photograph was taken and the cabinet housing has worked well.

 

The main antenna at the top of the mast failed and with difficult access to the mast to replace the antenna a tempory pole was bolted to the side of the cabinet. This at least kept VK6RMW voice and digipeater on air until the main antenna was replaced, which has since been done. The voice repeater's antenna is a commercial folded dipole near the top of the 160' mast. There are two antennas on the pole mast, a half wave 2M vertical at the top and a 5 element vertical beam half way down that was used for packet pointing at Bunbury.