VE7RPQ is ‘Out of Service’ :-(
Unfortunately, our ‘main’ repeater system here in the Oceanside area is down. While we’re not sure of the exact cause, there were numerouse lightning strikes recorded in close proximity to the Mt. Cokely repeater site, so it’s likely our system either got a hit or got overloaded by electrical discharge in the area.
Compounding this is the inaccessability of the site, especially as we move into the wetter and colder part of the year. Access to the site is a difficult climb, so it’s usually a helicopter ride to get supplies in and out. And, with the changeable weather now, it’s very challenging to find a ‘good day’ to land a helicopter at the site.
It is possible that the VE7RPQ repeater could be down for a number of months — possibly until Spring 2026. In the meantime, we are using our VE7RBB repeater, located at Errington Fire Hall #1 (147.180 Mhz + 100Hz) for the morning nets, etc. Unfortunately, it’s coverage at the edges of Oceanside (Nanoose to the south and Bowser to the north) isn’t as good, but we’ll see if there are ways to extend it’s coverage capability.
This also means that RPQ’s simplex remote bases on Mt. Benson in Nanaimo and the 6m one on the Water Tower in Qualicum Beach are no longer useful as well. We’re going to reconfigure VE7RBB to act as the new UHF ‘hub’ to pick up their signals and rebroadcast, so that should help somewhat (we hope!).
Update Nov. 14th, 2025 — Maintenance and updates have now been completed at our VE7RBB repeater site. It’s been a while since it’s last checkup, so it was loooonnnngggg overdue :-). We’ve cleaned up a lot of the cabling, replaced the power supply with one that’s a bit more robust, tweaked up the tuning cavities and increased the output power (slightly). We also reconfigured things a bit so now RBB will take signals from the Mt. Benson and QB Water Tower Remote Bases and rebroadcast them — just like RPQ used to do. Hopefully that will make things a bit easier for those located at the outer ‘ends’ of the Oceanside area.
