Mt. Tom History

The First Repeater on Mt. Tom

by Mike – WA1DMX

John (Peter) Bertini K1ZJH and myself, Mike Pyrch WA1DMX were the creators of the first 34/94 repeater on Mt Tom. John used to work at the channel 40 TV station as an engineer. John and I went up the Mountain one cold icy winter night to test the site out with a receiver and a bunch of junk. I wish I had pictures of that! We wound up walking up the access road when John rolled the Dodge Ram into a ditch climbing the mountain for his evening shift. John didn’t like that Dodge Ram because it was standard shift. John built the repeater in the basement of his father’s house where John lived. Long story shortened because I don’t remember all of the other funny things that happened that night or when we delivered the repeater. I haven’t talked to John lately.
I’m attaching the pictures I have of the original repeater. Get a kick out of the reel-to-reel logging recorder and note Mike WA1DMX sticking his fingers in the high voltage!

John K1ZJH took all the pictures with his Polaroid Camera.

Repeater in the back of John’s Chevy convertible at his home.

The repeater in the back of John’s Chevy convertible going up the Mt. Tom mountain.

WA1DMX sticking his fingers in the high voltage.

Field Day, 19??….same era as repeater
From left to right are Gregg, WA1DMK, Mike, WA1DMX, and John K1ZJH.

 

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