And some D-STAR stuff again!

A good time ago I received a Icom ID-RP1D/VS package from Jim N5MIJ to play with, and I have had it in my lab for a good time set up for some future interrest. Recently, a bunch of Icom ID-1 23cm D-STAR radios were offered for sale for a reasonable price, and I convinced fellow D-STAR entusiasts here that we need some radios as we do have a repeater. Only issue was to find a proper location for the repeater. The first generation repeater stuff is not packaged so that they would suffer in an outdoor cabined, although they are packed in a weather-proof looking chassis.

We took the radio's off the chassis to inspect how to re-build the setup so that we could fit everything important in to a (really) weatherproof casing and locate the repeater system to a high tower downtown Helsinki.

Finally I managed to start the recabling work on the radio units of the 23cm DV repeater (two boxes, TX and RX) and the 23cm DD data access point.

Here's the 23cm DV repeater TX unit with new SMA antenna connector in place, replacing the lossy pigtail cable which originally fed the N-connector on the chassis. Also the service connector cables and Control I/O cables are now terminated to a D9 connector, much easier for maintenance and cabling in the cabinet.

More details on this work will follow as it moves on. Next job is to modify the DV RX unit and DD accesspoint units accordingly and start planning how to fit them to the cabinet.