I just got news that our internet feed to the Bloss Mtn site, where the 146.910 is, should be active soon. Indigo Extreme has an excellent network and are the ones who provide internet to the 442.850 at Tower Hill. They have just complete their Blossburg Tower site and plan on getting the IP part of the network going in the very near future… This would not have been possible without them and especially Matt Hoppes, KB3MSC!!!
Thanks Matt!!!
What a year it has been and a lot has been accomplished! Here is a brief run down of 2011.
The 442.850 was completely upgraded from the ground up. The exec II was replaced with a Master II base station, The controller was upgraded to xipr app_rpt, and Ubiquiti 5.8 data radios installed for the internet connection. We now have the ability for full duplex linking, any type of announcement you could possibly think of as well as weather announcements. We also have an autopatch available now. If someone needs access to it just email me for the codes.
The 146.910 repeater at Bloss Mtn has had the transmitter replaced this year. Late in the year the power supply died and was replaced. When this was done we decided to change out the repeater controller as well. This is running the same controller as the 442.850. The network isn’t available up at the site yet and there is some work that needs to be done on the repeater. The squelch setting on the repeater is pretty high and the audio seems to be over driven on the voice announcements. Once the network is installed everything will go back to normal.
Future plans: Add some type of remote base to the system. I am thinking maybe of adding a 52.525 6 meter remote that could be linked in at anytime on any of the repeaters/system. I also had the thought of adding in my HF rig where I like to listen on 80 meters so if no one is on the air I would have the ability to talk on HF.
Does anyone have anything else I should put on my wish list or add to things?
Not a lot of changes have been made. The system is working great! We did up grade from the wifi connection to Indigo Xtreme thanks to Matt KB3MSE. We were using a Ubiquiti nanstation M to link off of North Penn’s wifi at the Tower Hill site. I am currently using 2 bullet 5′s to bring traffic from Indigo Xtreme on the County Tower Over to my tower. This is just a 7 meg leg in both directions but it is more than enough. The only time we really use that bandwidth is during an upgrade or to download the audio news.
Click on Stateline Repeater System to visit the page.
Thanks again Matt!
I deleted the previous post just to cut down on confusion. To ma e a long story short I messed up the controller on 442.850. Instead of building a test machine, I was working on a live System. We all know what can happen when you do this and it did just that. I replaced the computer controller and all is happy again. Headline and weather alerts are working as well. We are also in a different antenna that doesn’t shadow the west like before. We are right on the top of the tower.
Just curious… if I got something on either 6 meters or 900 mhz would anyone be interested in using it?
Last weekend I attempted to do a datalink between Tower Hill and Bloss Mtn. It didn’t quite work out. Bloss Mtn has a high noise floor on the 5 Ghz band. Even if there was a path there it wouldn’t work because of the noise floor. Most everywhere it is -72. I did find a few channels that were around -89, but that was the best I could find. I am going to give it one more attempt today. I have to reload the bullet at tower hill, make sure it is lined up, tune some duplexers for the 146.625 and then off to Bloss to check the other end… Wish me luck but I don’t think it is going to work out….
The remote receiver is my home QTH is working great! It already had the coverage I do from my house but it allows hand held coverage from Hills Creek State Park now. Before this receiver it was very noisy getting into the repeater with an HT.
I have also added Weather alerts about a month ago. If there is any type of Weather warning the repeater will announce it every 15 minutes. If you want to hear the full alert you would hit *83. If you want to chech the weather forecast you would use *841. This is updated hourly so it could change often.
We do have newsline on the repeater as well. It is automatically downloaded every Friday night. If there is ever a need to play it or if anyone would like it to play on a schedule, just let me know and I will make it happen!
I will also be creating an update on the total repeater system in the very near future. This will include all the repeaters that are linked full time and the ones that are on demand only. The Stateline Repeater System lives!!!
I have put an APRD digi up at Tower Hill on a trial basis. At this time it is acting as an IGATE and digi in one. It does eat a lot of the processor on the CPU that is also the repeater controller. At times I do find I need to remote in and stop the software or it makes the repeater audio sound digitized. People have ask me what it looks like so I decided to do this little right up and include a picture as well…
N3FE-1 APRS digi and Igate
Since switching to Asterisk for a repeater controller a lot of progress has been made in the repeater system. We first started with Asterisk as a repeater controller we ran the ACID Distro. After using it for a while we have switched to the distro Xippr that Steve, W9SH, maintains. Moving to this distro has allowed for better audio and allowing a cheaper way of voting the receivers.
442.850 has been up for quite some time now. With the latest Xippr software we are started testing remote receivers for the repeater system. This allows us to take a computer, receiver, and an internet connection and there is an instant remote receiver. At this time we have the main repeater at the site and I have also setup a test receiver at my home QTH. At this time there are 3 ways to setup the software. No Vote, One Shot, and Continuous. I am testing the continuous mode. In other words it constanty votes. You may hear a little jitter when this is happening due to internet latency. With the one shot it looks at the signal for the first second and will stay with the strongest receiver in that first second for the rest of the conversation.
I am quite impressed with the results! I can actually walk around on the HT in the house and have a full quieting signal. In the past I would have noisy spots. I do vote a
little bit to make the audio stutter but I can’t complain!!!
I am going to plan on setting a few more receivers up in the near future. If you are interested in doing this please drop me an email or contact me on the system. Setting one of these up would require you to port forward one port on you home router/firewall and an antenna. We are running the radio off the computer power supply because the radio isn’t transmitting.
It is hard to believe how much has happened in the last few years in ham radio!!!
Thanks to N3TJJ (Troy) I now have a GE Mastr IIe to covert for 444.600 that will go back to Wellsboro! I am use to working on th
e Mastr II base stations and the only difference is the Mastr IIe doesn’t have a backplane or cards. It has its own little controller. The controller will operate in 3 modes. Repeater Disable, Repeater, and Repeater using PL. I am going to assume I can put it in disable mode and wire up an external controller. I guess we will find out in the near future if I am right. One noce thing about this is it has the true FM exciter! This means GREAT audio! I am attaching a few photos of it.
I have corrected two issues we have been having at the Tower Hill site. The first is the internet connection kept failing. I moved the nanostation to the tower and it would constantly reset itself. I am going to have to assume RF was getting into the device. I have since put up 10 feet of mast and anchored it to the back of the building. We now have a very decent signal and the connection hasn’t dropped since Friday! We have a 36 meg link to the Access point now.
The 2nd issue was the transmitter would just stop working. I am going to have to assume the TX crystal got jarred about during transport. When the transmitter would quit I would head to the site but it would always come back before I got there so I would turn around. On Saturday evening I was on the way to the site and it came back to life, so I turned around only to have it quit working again when I was half way home. I made it to the site with it not working this time! This is when I found the transmitter was transmitting but nothing coming out of it. I dropped the door down and it worked. I started poking arond and found the ICOM was not pushed down all the way. I replaced it just to play it safe and we have been back on the air without any problems!!! (knock on wood)
