GE Mastr II Repeater

I have not done much in the ham shack for a while. Have many project to do but it seems like the time is spent in other areas. That is life I guess. Well I have a new projet that I have to get finished.

I am converting a GE Mastr II base station from commercial service to amateur radio repeater service. The original system was used as a base station up around 155 MHz. The GE is specified from 138 to 174 MHz but there were some component changes in models that operated below 150 MHz. Looking at web sites on converting these systems only the receiver has a few capacitors that need changed for optimum performance. The first step is to confirm the unit is working as it came out of service. Cleaning up the system I found there had been a mouse nest in the power supply. Had to clean that out. Apparently no damage caused by the unwelcome guests. Now on to testing the system. Testing the transmitter I found the output power was only 1.5 watts. That is a little off from the specified 100 watt output. There is a known issue where a strap that was placed between two PC boards to couple the output power from the finals to a filter develops a hairline fracture. The symptoms pointed to that as a possible problem. Turns out that was not the case. Since this was used in non-repeater service there is an antenna change over relay on the output. The relay had gone bad. Since I am using this for repeater service I don't need the relay so I pulled it off of the board and jumpered across it with a small length of RG-316 coax. Problem solved. I can develop the full 100 watt output now. For testing purposes I set the power output to 50 watts while I am doing the conversion. Next step will be check the receiver.