New repeater VA3AAR in Almonte

Union Hall Almonte, site of VA3AAR

The Almonte Amateur Radio Club has recently installed and made operational a 2m D-STAR repeater, VA3AAR.  The frequency is 145.550 (- offset).  Andrew, VE6EN/VE3UIY/M0GRU has reported on the OARDG e-mail list that the range in the first round of testing was found to be for “mobile coverage from Arnprior, West Ottawa (Kanata/Stittsvile, Britannia (Carling Ave)) and Perth”. From my home station in Greely with an omnidirectional antenna with its base at about 20ft I can reach the repeater with 15W.  This repeater is showing good coverage.

Interestingly the repeater shares the same antenna as the FM repeater, VA3ARE, on 147.240+. This was cleverly set up by Phil, VE3CIQ.

Saturday Morning D-STAR Net First Birthday

Checking through my records on Saturday before the net I realized the first Saturday Morning D-STAR net had run on 17th April 2010, so the net has been running for a year.  Over that time we have had a steady group of check-ins each Saturday.  People have checked in from across Ontario, from the UK, USA and even Japan.

We have missed very few Saturdays, one being the Saturday we had the Ottawa D-Star Symposium in November.  Andrew, M0GRU, and Dale, VE3XZT, have been net controllers, along with me, over the year.

This Saturday’s net had eleven check-ins, including net-control. Check-ins again were across Ontario, USA  and the UK.  A notable check-in was Jeff, VE3EFF, who checked-in from Chicago O’Hare Airport, whilst waiting for a flight to Ottawa.

With regards to other nets Bill, KC8YQL, this week  told the net about two other Stateside nets:

• Ohio State Wide D-STAR Net on REF38A at 8pm Eastern Time on Sunday
• D-STAR Radio Scanning Net on REF12C at 9pm Eastern Time on Sunday

As I write this post I am listening to the Scanning Net via my DVAP and it is very informative. If you are interested in scanners and scanning it is worth listening to.

Results of the special Tuesday night CanNet

The special Tuesday night CanNet to test the D-STAR network across Canada went very well.  I was returning home from work and listened to the net start and take check-ins across from BC to Saskatchewan.  I arrived home at that point in the net and could not stay around for the Ontario check-ins.

E-mailing Gord, VE7FKY, indicated that it was a big success and he had the following to report.

The net went fantastic.  My original email said it should last for about 1/2 to 3/4 of an hour, but I didn’t realize the support we would get for this test net.  We ended up just shy of 70 checkins and it went almost 90 minutes to accommodate everyone.  We handled both French and English.

From a technical point of view there’s not much excitement.  The net ran almost flawless and the xrf reflector held the stress test better then I would have thought.  On the Friday night net we have been pointing some fingers at DVAP/Dongles/DVARS etc. as being our culprit but the Tuesday night net everybody lived in complete harmony.  We didn’t need to separate rf from the other DVAP/Dongles etc as we do on Friday nights.  From my point of view being a CanNet net control op this was one of the sweetest nets I could have handled.  On Friday nights when I’m the net op it can be very frustrating when the dropouts occur, you don’t know if it’s local, reflector, or the whole system has gone down.  I do have the luxury of having both an ICOM and Free Star system to listen to out here and usually one or the other goes down and sometimes both go down.  Try doing a net where you don’t have a clue to what’s happening.

The only dropouts we had  were man made.  A few doubles and a couple of people with beacons turned on were are only issues.  Even the beacon issues were handled very smoothly by the xrf reflector, whereas on an ref reflector it can cause major dropouts.  The doubles also were handled very well.  We were down only for that one particular transmission whereas on an ref system it might come back on the next transmission or you might have to wait a couple.  One repeater system that can drop out totally on a Friday night and they have to bring down the link and restart it again, had no problems that way at all.

Although it’s only one night, it would appear that the Free Star system is more stable then the DPlus system.  I would like to thank everyone who participated or just listened in.  Your comments during the net and those emailed to me after were very much appreciated.  It was so successful that were in the talking stages about putting together a second night of the CanNet using xrf021b.

Well done to Gord and all the other organizers.

D-STAR test net on March 22nd

Image from Wikimedia.  By Glide under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence

There is a special net at 9pm EDT on the 22nd March for some testing.  This was sent to me by Gord, VE7FKY

Hello everyone:

As you know, depending on which week were talking about, the CanNet can experience many dropouts.  We have been trying many hopeful solutions and meeting with some success.  What were asking is on Tuesday March 22 can we ask you to participate in a test net on xrf021B.  As most of you know xrf is part of the free star system.  Although the CanNet is primarily on the ICOM G2 system, free star repeaters can log onto ref016b and participate.  Ramesh (VA3UV) has been trying to help us figure out how and why these drop outs are occurring.  This test net is to find out how the free star system holds up on it’s own.  We would like to get as many people to participate as possible so we can put the system through the same paces that ref 16b can experience on a Friday night CanNet.

This test net will operate something similar to the CanNet.  Were just looking for you to check in when asked and do a short transmission, and then hang around to the end if possible.  Please spread the word to other d star users who would be able to participate. We’ll accept dongles and dvaps users also.

All free star systems are able to access xrf021b.  Most ICOM system in Canada also have dxtra installed and can access xrf021b.  If your ICOM repeater does not have dxtra installed and you would like to help us out please have the owner/administrator touch base Ramesh ramesh@va3uv.com and he’ll help get dxtra installed.

Any questions feel free to reply to this email.  We look forward to hearing you on as your definitely part of the solution.

Test Net Information:

Date:  Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Time:  9 pm EDT,

location:  xrf021b

approx. length of net:  1/2 hr to 45 minutes depending on number of checkins.

If you can help by participating please do.

Reported over-reliance on GPS systems

Artist Interpretation of GPS satellite, image courtesy of NASA. From Wikimedia Commons

A little off-topic from D-STAR but readers may be interested. The BBC has recently posted an article about the UK’s possible over-reliance of satellite navigation systems, following the publication of a report by the Royal Academy of Engineering. The Academy’s website has the news release and the full report.

Although the report looks at the broad use of satellite navigation systems, it is interesting to reflect on how much we, as individuals, use GPS systems.  APRS, DPRS, car driving directions, geocaching, photo-tagging, locating lost smartphones. What other ways have you used GPS systems?

Finally, are we losing the skill of map reading? In the future will many not know how to use a topographical map?

Why there was a brief Gateway outage

Hard disk head By Agadez (Own work) ;CC-BY-SA-3.0. From Wikimedia Commons

Last week there was a brief gateway outage. Ying, VA3YH, sent the following message explaining the reason why.

Unfortunately, VA3YH suffered a hard drive failure in his home gateway machine. All VA3ODG D-Star data is running though this gateway machine. Fortunately he has a spare machine for it. When you are using old equipment, always prepare for hard drive failure. 🙂
It took VA3YH a few days to fully configured the machine and everything is back to normal now.

Ying also reported that OARDG is testing a second Internet route using the YMCA network.

The work that the OARDG system administrators do is greatly appreciated and this is the first gateway outage for a long time.  Thanks to Ying for getting the gateway up and running again so quickly.

Ying’s comment on having a hard drive back-up is a good one.  What is your back-up strategy? External disks, raid set-ups, internet back-up or other?  Let us know what you use and recommend, post a comment below.  My own back-up with my Mac systems is to use an external drive and Time Machine.  I have not had to use it yet.

Today’s Saturday morning net stretched around the world

Yamato River in Oji, Nara, Japan by By Kansai explorer (Own work). Image under a Creative Commons license

Each Saturday morning at 8:30am (local time) the Ottawa Amateur Digital Group net runs on repeater VA3ODG module C which is linked to REF016B.  This morning was notable as besides the local check-ins we had not only the usual international check-in of Andrew, M0GRU, from London,  but also we had Jeff,VE3EFF, who is currently in Costa Rica and Greg, JO3SLK who was in Oji, Japan. Greg was using an ID-1 into repeater JP3YHJ.  He was unable to link in via the reflector, but did come in direct to the repeater.

 

It was good to have people checking into the net from around the world and the international flavour made a great net even more enjoyable.

If want to join us in future nets then link in to REF016B on Saturdays at 1230 UTC, or 1130 UTC when daylight savings time is in effect.