PGARC Work Report 2023-06-02 to 2023-06-08
Carney Hill 2023-06-02 to 2023-06-04
Site dead: Jeff went to the site and found the charger failed and batteries deeply discharged. He rewired the 75 amp charger which normally only runs on the generator and got the site back on the air but asked Graig to investigate the power issues.
There are two AC breaker panels. Panel “A” is grid only and panel “B” is grid or generator.
Diagnosis:
A call from CFIS reported that their transmitter was off and BC Hydro had no known outages. The 20-amp 2- pole breaker in panel “A” which feeds panel “B” was open one side. It appears that it tripped one pole but the internal spring wasn’t strong enough to trip the other pole so it looked ok. The CFIS transmitter (20-amp breaker), air conditioner, and battery charger were all on panel “B” so the breaker in Panel “A” was overloaded. It was originally a 30-amp breaker but must have been replaced with a 20-amp breaker at some time in the past. The 20-amp battery charger failed with burn marks on the circuit board and the generator did not start.
The generator control appeared to have attempted to start the generator on low battery voltage but it failed to start. This is common with a propane generator that isn’t routinely tested every month. The start battery is good. If it had started, we would not have known because the alarms system we have on site went through a system that is no longer in service..
Repair:
Moved panel “B” to a 30-amp breaker as originally designed. Moved the CFIS transmitter to panel “A” (grid only). It won’t run on our generator because the generator output isn’t stable enough so that change needed to be done. Ran another AC circuit so we can have 2 chargers on separate breakers, one from each power panel. Replaced the failed battery charger with one of the new ones and took the failed one to be serviced.
Maintenance:
Cleaned up the data cables on the wall and floor behind the equipment bays. Removed more junk wires and cables left from the previous owner. Gordon worked on the data system reconfiguration.
Fraser Mountain 2023-06-06 to 2023-06-07
On Tuesday, Gordon worked on the data configuration & tested the repeater link problem between Fraser and Pilot. The trouble was isolated to Pilot.
On Wednesday, a work party of 3 (Ken, Frank C. & Graig) went to Fraser. They demolished the old building and hauled 2 truck loads of junk to the Fraser Lake dump, installed the cabinet for the propane tank, replaced the duplexer with the multicouplers, installed lightning arrestors in all the antenna coax cables and several other small jobs. The solar modules, racking, and charge controller are on site. We need a climb shield around our tower. Wrapping it with chain link fence would be the least expensive. (13 lineal feet needed)
Pilot Mountain 2023-06-08
Two people (Graig & Frank C.) went to Pilot Mountain. The UHF hub was not passing audio but incoming signals would key up the transmitter. The trouble was isolated to the controller so as a temporary fix, the George link was disabled so that port could be used for the hub. The DC breaker panel was replaced because we ran out of breakers on the old one. We also replaced the non-standard second equipment rack because some equipment would not fit the old rack. This work necessitated shutting off the whole site during the upgrades. We need a 10M extension cord so the two chargers can be plugged into different circuits.