Author: Rik M7GMT

Christmas Repeater Crawl 2024

Posted on by Rik M7GMT

Tis the season to be jolly, so what better way to spread the festive cheer than a good old pub repeater crawl!?

The idea is to have a few drinks, visit as many local repeaters as the group can reasonably reach, make some noise on the air, and generally have a bit of a laugh.

As GB3TX is currently down for maintenance, we’ll initially be meeting up on GB3NB at 20:00 on Saturday 21st December 2024 and working our way around the list below, ending up back on GB3NB once we’ve been “round the houses”.

Order (subject to change):

  1. GB3NB
  2. GB3NR
  3. GB3DE (Echolink and AllStar enabled)
  4. GB3AH

Looking forward to meeting up with you all, and please let everyone know by sharing this link. Hope you can join us!

Easter Saturday 2m FM Low Power Challenge

Posted on by Rik M7GMT

Andy 2E0DIQ is doing his usual fine job of drumming up activity in the area with another event aimed at getting stations of all levels out portable and having fun with radio.

Details as follows:

Easter Saturday 30th March 1200-1400hrs 2m FM Low Power challenge
To operate on no more power than Foundation licence allows (10w currently, 25w when Ofcom allows, should be by Easter)
To set up /P in a place of your choice, to run an antenna of your choice, at a height of your choice. You cannot operate from your home QTH.
The aim, to exchange callsign, signal report, and WAB square with as many others as possible in a 2hr timeframe.

Walkie talkie challenge:
As above, but power not exceeding 5w (ie no plugging radio into an amp). Walkie talkie to walkie talkie contacts – give it try?

The point of the exercise is to create a level playing field for all operators, of all licence levels and to have fun testing and trying out radios and antennas in the field.

Christmas Repeater Crawl 2023

Posted on by Rik M7GMT

Tis the season to be jolly, so what better way to spread the festive cheer than a good old pub repeater crawl!?

The idea is to have a few drinks, visit as many local repeaters as the group can reasonably reach, make some noise on the air, and generally have a bit of a laugh.

We’ll initially be meeting up on GB3NZ at 20:00 on Saturday 23rd December 2023 and working our way around the list below, ending up back on the Team Wave “home” repeater of GB3VW.

Order (subject to change):

  1. GB3NZ
  2. GB3NB
  3. GB3NR
  4. GB7NB
  5. GB7DS
  6. GB3AH
  7. GB3VW

We could also link the digital repeaters together via the Team Wave MEGAREPEATER, so people can come in from whatever box works for them. Looking forward to meeting up with you all, and please let everyone know by sharing this link. Hope you can join us!

Packet Radio SSID and Alias convention

Posted on by Rik M7GMT

SSIDs

SSIDs are used to identify separate services running under the same call sign. For example, you may have a node, a BBS, and a chat server all running on your home packet station. All three can’t operate as exactly the same call, so an SSID is added on the end to differentiate between them.

There isn’t a fixed convention on which services should use which SSID, but as a group, it would be helpful if we had a “standard” we used, just for clarity. It doesn’t really matter what the standard is, as long as we document it, and stick to it.

With that in mind, I would like to propose the following :

  • M7GMT – Your “raw” call sign without an SSID (this implies -0). Your personal terminal. Use when you connect to other systems, are having a chat, etc.
  • M7GMT-1 – BBS (mailbox). This is somewhat of a convention already, with many TNC’s in-built mailbox defaulting to -1.
  • M7GMT-3 – Chat
  • M7GMT-5 – Node

We can use SSIDs 1 to 15, so if there are other services that several stations run (e.g. DX Cluster), we can add a new line here to keep things organised.

Aliases

Aliases are used as a “friendly name” for packet stations, allowing you to connect without having to remember whch SSID you need. For example, my node currently has the alias WYMOND (for Wymondham), so you could connect by typing either connect M7GMT-5 or connect WYMOND.

Aliases can be up to 6 characters, and should be unique on the packet network. The idea is for these to be memorable, so I would be interested in your feedback on the following formats:

  1. WAVExx – WAVE followed by a 2 letter ID. First letter is first letter of city/town/village. Second letter is type: D for digipeater, N for node, B for BBS, and C for chat. Examples:
    • WAVEWD:MB7NAF = Wymondham Digipeater
    • WAVEAN:M7GMT-5 = Attleborough Node
  2. WAVxxx – WAV followed by a 3 letter ID. As option one, but this allows an extra character for station ID, which would help prevent potential clashes as the network grows. Examples:
    • WAVBCC:GB7MSX-3 = Burgh Castle Chat
    • WAVWYD:MB7NAF = WYmondham Digipeater
    • WAVATN:M7GMT-5 = ATtleborough Node
  3. TWxxxx – TW followed by a 4 letter ID. This allows even more flexibility for the station ID, but is perhaps less clear that they are all associated. Examples:
    • TWBUCC:GB7MSX-3 = BUrgh Castle Chat
    • TWWYMD:MB7NAF = WYMondham Digipeater
    • TWATTN:M7GMT-5 = ATTleborough Node

Discuss

Again, what we settle on is less important than sticking to the standard. I would love your feedback on this, other formats to consider, and so on.

Happy packeting!

Our first packet net

Posted on by Rik M7GMT

It’s been talked about for a long time, but we’ve finally set a date for our first packet net; Saturday 17th September at 20:00 – 144.950FM.

With so few of us within simplex range of each other, digipeating will be essential, so please make sure this is enabled in your TNC if you’re taking part. The more stations we can get involved, the better this will work, so if your station is packet-capable, please dust off your TNC and join in.

Stations confirmed so far:

  1. M0XTF Tony – Bungay
  2. M0VCX John – Watton
  3. M1MIT Tim – Norwich
  4. M5MSX Martin – Gt. Yarmouth
  5. M7GMT Rik – Attleborough

As this will be the first attempt, we’ll be figuring out who can hear who, and exactly how paths should be configured, but if all goes well, this could become a regular thing, perhaps alternating with a 2m JS8 net. We could call it SaturDATA. 🙂