Internet Gateway 70.4125

[M0BMN]

Hi All
Just a note to let you know that i have just set up a Internet Gateway on 4m on 70.4125Mhz,
The gateway will not be 100% operational till next weekend (new antenna being fitted outside next week) but it is running now and getting good reports, have a listen for it and please send me a report. it will need a 67HZ CTCSS tone to access it but of course you can receive it on any 4m radio/scanner,
i am located in wolverhampton in the west midlands but have a very good take off due to the hight here, ony using a loft mounted 1/2 wave now but switching over to a 3/4 wave on a pole on the roof next week.
all the best
Paul M0BMN

[GM0GTU]

Paul,
Would that be Echolink/IRLP?

Regards, Stewart

[M0BMN]

Hi
Sorry i didnt say, its Echolink, just tunned up the new antenna today ready for fitting next week, wind increased, the antenna fell over and bent the main vertical section >?%$&* , after another 30mins work its more or less back straight and ready to be put up, hope its not to windy on Wednesday next week.
best wishes
Paul m0bmn

[M0NKA]

Hi Paul,

I just quickly connected my Maxon PM150 to the horizontal antenna and
got your signal loud and clear. For the 20 min listen I did it seems very
active. Nice change from the usual faint signals I get round here.

73, Chris

[G6NJR]

Gawd another darn excuse for people to claim they have worked someone when in fact it was the internet that worked them one more nail in the coffin worst luck does 4 HAVE to go the way of darm 2 meters

Pete G6NJR

[G1FNR]

Just a note to say well done on the gateway. I cannot understand anyone who would be against this. Communication is interesting and exciting regardless of the medium. To complain about internet integration seems to me to be pointless and churlish. If I can receive your transmission I will let you know. Thanks for the hard work - I hope it succeeds 100%

[M0BMN]

Pete, 4m in my area has very little use many people I know will not invest money in a new radio if they feel that there will be no one to talk to. The link just gives some people more of a reason to give 4m a go, the band is certainly not full of people calling CQ and making it hard to find a clear freq.
after all Pete if you really don’t like links then just don’t use them, You say that you don’t want 4m to go the way of 2m, well I recall about 20 years ago when 2m was full, it was hard to find a clear freq at times, but now other than the repeaters and links the band is often dead here. IMHO 4m could do with much more activity and I hope the link does bring more users to the band. Sorry Pete if your upset by internet linking but we must evolve or die as a hobby. What do others think? Is it a good or bad thing to have link repeaters on 4m?

[M0NKA]

I have 5 element Yagi, 10m above the ground. Except the QRM from the
houses on the street above, your Link is the only local signal i get in a city of
6 million people. So i guess its a good thing to have any activity at all.

Saying that - i have no idea how Echolink works. I have it on my iPhone,
but to call my buddy, have to always make a sked via Skype first as the
App will not work in the background. It's a mystery to me how i can hear
two american callsigns on your link, do they talk to each other via TCP/IP
and your link just broadcast their QSO ?

73, Chris

[GW8IZR]

My opinion which as previously stated, according to my wife “counts for nothingâ€

[M0BMN]

HI Chris and all

Just to let you know how the link works,
its very easy to use,
my radio is connected via a interface to my PC, the pc has a internet connect and is connected via software to a remote server. There are around 30+ other stations connected to the same server and all these stations form the network of links. if any station receives a transmission it is relayed in real time via that stations interface to the server and all the stations connected, all these stations then re-transmit the receved call out to there local area, so if a guy with a handheld near a link in say NZ calls CQ his call is relayed over all the other stations in the link , so you would hear it coming out on my 4m link, if you replyied my station would pass your reply via the web to all the other link stations and they would transmit your reply too including the on in NZ, as far as you are concerned its just like using a normal repeater but you do not need to put any repeater shift in, from mid week you will need a 67hz CTCSS Tone to transmit via my link but any 70mhz radio or scanner will be fine on rx.

I understand the point of view of others that we run the risk of making 4m (and other bands) seem like short range only bands but the hobby is broad and no one will please everyone , but i hope we can all agree on that.
The link only runs with about 7 watts ERP so i would not expect it to have that great a range and most areas only have access to one or 2 links at most, hopfully the for and against crowd can live together in peace Hi.

[M0NKA]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for detailed explanation. I have general understanding. Just i lack
knowledge of the fine details. The server you are talking about is different
than <yourcall>-L that is listed in the Echolink directory ? Cause when i
try to connect to it - i get error. Is this because i am in the UK ? Why does
the status says - In conference IRELAND ?

IZR:

Fine points, but still almost half of the band is allocated for FM and is really
not used at all. Should we just keep it unused with the hope that will be
allocated one day to SSB phone ?

73

[M0BMN]

HI Again

Best thing to do is to go to http://www.echolink.org/ and have a read of whets on the site , that should help, but basically my station is in conference with all the other stations on the IRELAND server, there are 100's of conferences on at the same time and most can support 100's of users . the Ireland server seems to be one of the biggest and has good bandwidth so most English speaking areas join that, if the system was set to allow you to connect to my station then you would just be having a private chat with my link and its local users, by putting my link in conference you access 30+ link connected stations at the same time giving you coverage in many different countries. If you wanted to talk just to a friend on a pc then you would just connect to him and not join a conference.
hope that helps a little but if you need more info please email me direct so we don’t bore everyone else Hi

[GW8IZR]

NKA:

I can’t see anything in my post that suggests that I may want expansion of the SSB (or CW) section of the bandplan.

To reiterate I would prefer that people put in a bit of effort and use VHF/UHF for what its best for whatever mode they chose but at least make those qso’s on the radio. Get some satisfaction from learning about propagation and how to get the best out of a VHF installation.

Or if you want to work HF put up a HF antenna. As we come up the cycle you don’t even need much of an antenna to work the world.

Or you could let others (gateway providers, software authors, ISP’s) make all the effort for you and just connect to your local gateway with your handheld. CQ DX :-)

[GW8ASD]

I can understand the interest in making a radio operate over the internet, from the point of view of a project, I must admit I can't see a use for the sort of interconnection a gateway gives, from an operational point of view.
When I came back on the radio, in 2001, I was looking at what changes had taken place and discovered G0PVR? gateway and had my one an only QSO of this type, with a VK.
Interesting technology but I couldn't actually see the point.

I do see the value of point to point remote control of your station and the ability to have remote connection to a receiver, in order to monitor propagation, has its uses but to conduct a QSO, where only the last small bits of the link are RF, is lost on me.

In much the same way, I understand repeaters, when it's mobiles using them, but at a loss when fixed stations do.

I'm rarely short of someone to speak to on VHF/UHF, without artificial assistance.
From my, occasional, observations many repeater QSOs would be perfectly possible direct.
I've even heard people remark that they can copy the other station on the input and still not QSY off the repeater.

M0BMN is only 83km from here so should be a good signal direct and M0NKA is only 95km so, again, should be no problem.
G1FNR is about 200km, very close to M0GHZ, a more difficult path from here but perfectly possible.
I'm not sure how it is that I've never worked any of you.
It could be that you are only on FM, of course, in which case our paths are unlikely to cross as I, generally, only use FM for the odd DX station and it would be with horizontal polarisation.

With regards to 2M I fully realise it's not as busy as it was in the mid, to late, 70's when I had my previous chance to be active.
In those days a CQ call, even at 2am, would usually get a reply and, on a busy day, it was difficult to find a bit of free space to slot into.
These days it's a bit more difficult to find daytime QSOs, particularly with mobiles, but there's usually someone around.
This is SSB, I don't use FM, and the stations are spread around the country, and near Europe.

M5PYE/M still waves the flag, I worked him a few days ago whilst he was driving along the M6 around Birmingham (about 110km from here).
His next QSO was with GD8EXI.
Not bad with a halo and flat band.
No repeaters involved, just 100W, of SSB, and a halo.

Cheers

Tony

[GM4FVM]

Boring? What, just because we have been over it so many times before? Surely not!

It seems to me that the key reason for amateur radio to exist is for self training of the licencee. Without a band of enthusiastic amateurs who are up to date, developing new technical approaches, and keeping up with technical progress, the authorities would decide that we would be better on Skype.

Where are the new technical approaches we need to keep up with? Well, not really on weak signal SSB stuff. The world of professional radio has shifted off to UHF, digital and FM, using repeaters, internet links and satellites. In doing so they have cleared off frequencies which we can now use.

If radio amateurs are to use their skills some day, and to share their learning with their careers (which so many have done before), they cannot get very far if the technology they are using as amateurs diverges too far from the current state of the art.

In other words, it is getting a bit hard to see how my (lack of?) proficiency on CW is much use in the real world which I suppose my amateur hobby is meant to prepare me for. Yes, I love working long distances on SSB on VHF and finding out new things that way, but it is only part of my hobby. Another part is that I do use repeaters (not on 4 of course!). Does this make me a bad man? Do I think that using repeaters, internet gateways and dongles makes amateurs lazy? Yes, I do, but it does not stop me learning a bit more from actually allowing them to exist.

In the event of a real civil emergency, then those of us who do not rely on the conveniences of high-energy living can say that we told you so. If it ever happens round here in my lifetime, I will feel vindicated for keeping my batteries charged with solar panels all these years.

It is open to question what adding some software or a dongle and working through the internet would do for my self training. Still less just talking into a device somebody else put on the band (and the person who put it there certainly learned something doing that). Maybe not much. I haven't even tried just in case I might like it. However, I cannot say that those who do these things are wasting their time or my spectrum.

I decide what aspect I pursue so I cannot assume that my interests are provided for and everybody else's are denied. For example, after dabbling with meteor scatter I gave that up as being another form of queue jumping. Not sufficiently hair shirt for me. That does not mean that nobody can come up here and report a meteor scatter QSO. And yes, I do know that meteor scatter is in daily use in the commercial radio world.

I do like lying on a bed of nails. That is not to say that those who luxuriate on their Slumberdowns are not entitled to a good night's sleep. Now that was a complicated metaphor. Those of us who go down the difficult weak signal route out of choice will certainly learn things which are not capable of being learned on the local gateway. But if some of those on the gateway get bored and realise that there is a life out there which offers more challenge, frustration and personal development, well, they are welcome on board.

I have not had a contact on SSB on 4 for over two months. Is that a reason for using an internet linked set-up to keep me talking? Not in my eyes. But if somebody else is not willing to wait two months for a contact, I would not condemn them for trying something else in the meantime.

Right, I am off to spend the next 90 days living at the top of a telegraph pole.

Wake me up when the band opens.

Jim
GM4FVM