05 April 2015
I've had the opertunity to work with Mark (MW0MAU) on the control hardware for his D-Star node.
Like many D-Star node keepers who are running small nodes with the MB6I** (intermittent) call
NoV's - Mark has to dissable his node when he is sleeping or not actually physically in the
proxymity of the node. The side effect is that many of these nodes are totally off-air when the
keeper is not near-by.
The solution we have cooked up, keeps the node legally on-air 24/7! How great is that!
What happens is that the Pi controlling the node, detects the presesnce of the keeper, while the
keeper is near by the node runs in unlocked public mode wit the full node callsign, and conects to
the Icom G2 network for callsign routing. When the keeper is not near by, the controller changes
its own configuration, flips to Mark's own callsign, disconnects from the Iom G2 network and
connects to the open network instead, lock's itself for private use only. The major advantage of
this setup, is that for those who only listen, the node is up on REF 001 C neaarly all the time.
We will be fully releasing the image for the Pi with "pistar-keeper" on it, and also releasing
the keeper software seperately in due corse - once testing is compleated.
24 March 2015
Its that time of year again, the bands will be jumping with stations from all over the world.
CW WW WPX is nearly here; the SSB contest will take place on Marth 28th & 29th.
Even if you are not a "contester", this is still a great operunity to work some rarer stations
and to give some points away, you never know you might just win your section! All the major bands
will be used from 160m - 10m (excluding WARC of course).
The exchange is the usual RST + Serial number, so 59 001 for your first contact, 59 002 for the
second and so on. remarkably 99% of the contacts you hear will be 59, mostly a side effect of not
having the time to look at the S meter. Since there is no standard for S-meter calibration, the
report is somwhat pointless anyway - but that's a whole different topic!
18 March 2015
Just what it says, it's almost time for this year's RoPoCo contest, 90 mins of some of the best fun you can
have on HF, even if contesting isn't normally your thing, this one is a good bit of fun!
16 March 2015
Well thats also done, the conest calendar is back in action, fully populated and up to date!
16 March 2015
The contest calandar is almost back in action, kind of glad I looked at this today, it reminded me that CQ WW WPX is coming up at the end of the month!