[Linux-ham] packet radio -- resurrecting equipment

Tue Jan 14 13:47:49 EST 2014

I'll get a station on 145.03 as soon as possible. Probably this weekend.  Somewhere in the house I already have the cable for my 2m rig.    My wild guess is that anybody who can get 443.625 on an HT can probably work me with a base antenna, on 2m and maybe on 440. 

I'm curious where everybody is who is going to be playing with this.  Please characterize your site as well, what kind of antenna?  What repeaters to you hit with an HT from your house and what can you get with your base station equipment?  What kind of antenna do you use on 2m and 440?

Kevin,
   Your coordinates in QRZ are for Bowling Green so the map wouldn't give me distance.  Hillsborough is pretty far for me. 
  In the interest of characterizing where you can communicate, can you tell me what repeaters you can hit?  Also how strong these repeaters are to you? 
145.19-  156.7pl  -- if you can get this, then 443.625   88.5pl   (North Raleigh)
145.23-  107.2pl  -- if you can get this, then try 443.475   131.8pl  (Chapel Hill)
147.255+   82.5pl    (Ashboro)

I have some small hope of reaching a really good site in Hillsboro from my house but it is a stretch and would require luck, power and yagis on both ends.  Yuck.  I have a mount on the house with 2 VHF/UHF multi-band verticals.  i could mount yagis for fixed direction but have not done so, so far.

  What I'm thinking is to put in a link from my house to North Chapel Hill at KV7D's house using 220Mhz 25watts and short yagis, and then repeat from there over to Hillsborough on 440Mhz.  Does this make sense?  This would give us a few sites for new participants to tie into.   What I'd really like is somebody who can talk to KV7D and also to Efland.  I want to see Efland link further west, and south down to Charlotte.  That may take a few more hops.  I know somebody in Efland that should be interested in this but I need to get a demo setup going to show them.  . 

  I bought 4 of the TNC-PI kits and have a pair of 25 watt 220 rigs and a pair of 25watt 440 rigs to test with.  Also have two Raspberry PI units.  I hope to build one of the kits this weekend.  I'm not great with small stuff due to eyes but am willing to give it a go.  The TNC-PI looks very easy as all of the parts are through-hole and the ICs are appear to be in sockets.  
  If our links are short enough, we can use antique and cheap, or new and Chinese, handie talkies to make the hops.  
  There are two hams near me that want in on this, I just want to test out the PiLinBpq software with the TNC-PI boards before I go crazy and recommend that people reproduce this setup.  The PI and pair of TNCs costs about $140 (see attached picture).  25watt 440 ham radio mobile rigs are about $125 each on the used market.  Convertible commercial rigs are about $80.  220 ham radio HTs cost about $80 and 440 HTs are around $50 both on the used market for old, and the new market for Chinese.  . 
  Once i get my two neighbors hooked up, they should be able to offer linking in some directions better than I can.

Is anybody in the area interested in a kit party?  I have tools, and will supply pizza.  . 

   Tadd   KA2DEW

On Jan 14, 2014, at 12:40 PM, Kevin Otte <nivex at nivex.net> wrote:

> These are all good suggestions, especially the part about keeping off
> the wirelines. (I think the old phrase was "landline lid"?) The point is
> to build a network for our own experimentation.
>
> Much of our gear has probably been gathering dust for quite awhile and
> we're starting from scratch. The journey of a thousand steps and all
> that... To that end, the suggestion of a single frequency is just to see
> who's actually out there and can hear each other. Once we have more than
> a couple nodes with more than one radio, then we can start looking at
> other frequencies, etc.
>
> I've blown the dust off my KPC-3 and have it sitting on 145.03. It's
> emitting a beacon every 10 minutes with the URL for the info on this
> mailing list. I also have the PBBS configured on it for N8VNR-1. If you
> can hit it, feel free to drop me a message.
>
> 73 de N8VNR
>
> On 01/13/2014 11:10 AM, Tadd Torborg wrote:
>> Me too. Technology is only part of the problem. We have to focus on
>> building links instead of stations. CSMA does not work when there are
>> over the horizon stations. The trick to make a working amateur radio
>> packet network is to build point to point links and switches. So
>> picking a free for all channel is counter productive. Everybody needs
>> two links or more. No collisions. The second issue is to keep the
>> amateur radio network separate from the professional network, at least
>> in terms of data flow. Let's start with chat. Next we figure out how
>> to make a TDMA user port
>> Does this sound too hard?
>> Sent from my abacus
>
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