GB3PF History

GB3PF was first brought into service on the 10th October 1978, it was located on a commercial tower close to the New Inns Pub (now the Spice Lounge) on the hill above Rishton. The repeater was an extensively modified Pye F9U by Alan G3XAD and included his own design of logic.  Alan also built the cavity filters and installed the unit on site. The site was 760 feet ASL and the mast was 120 feet tall. Sperate antennas were used for RX and TX. The RX antenna was a J Beam commercial 3 element yagi mounted 100 feet up the mast beaming East North East. The RX antenna was connected using Andrews coax to the receiver via the cavity filters. The TX antenna was mounted at 100 feet up the mast using another J Beam 3 element yagi also pointed East North East. This configuration gave 20 feet of vertical separation to assist the cavity filters in isolating the TX and RX.

The transmitter output was 5 watts and the receiver was fitted with a Modular Electronics preamp. The system had a backup battery in case of mains failure. The repeater operated on RB0 433MHz with a 1.6MHz split.

Information about the early days of GB3PF was found on Mike G4BLH website

GB3PF ceased service in December 2010 following a steep rise in site fees the Group was unable to fund.

In October 2017 Neil M0NFI licensed and put GB3PF back on the air using the same frequencies and duplexer it originally used an Icom IC-FR4100 commercial repeater