TEARA's NEW! WB4IUY repeater in Clayton, NC

Considerable testing was performed on the repeater's receiver sensitivity, when in "repeat" mode. The receiver was very sensitive, but would often become desensitized when the transmitter was online. Lots of testing was performed on the duplexers, transmitter, exciter, etc, in an effort to isolate the problem. Finally, it became apparent that the transmitter was intermittently generating wide band noise and exhibiting some instability in tuning. Here's the repeater, awaiting PA surgery...

Late in the night of 4/4, I decided to replace the transmitter's PA (power amplifier) assembly. On 4/5, Steve KD4WIW and I met to formulate a plan and decide what we'd use for the PA. We were all set to pull the entire RCA transmitter (exciter) and PA, and replace it with a 100 watt Motorola Micor (requiring the modification of the Micor, a lot of hardware and electrical modifications, etc) when we were able to locate an exact replacement RCA Series 1000 power amplifier. Here's Tim salvaging the replacement PA from another radio, to be transplanted into the repeater...

Steve, Tim, and I began work on 4/5 around 7pm, and by about 11:30pm, a new power amplifier was installed and tuned. The wide band noise problem is now non-existent, and the repeater rx/tx performance in "repeat mode" is what we were hoping for. Here's Tim (L) and Steve (R) transplanting the new PA board into the repeater. That's NO SMALL FEAT on a RCA Series 1000 PA!