Power and Move

Hi all,

There maybe some power outages to the repeater over the next week or so, this is due to a faulty boiler on site!
The repeater has battery backup, and so does the gateway server, but the servers power only lasts for around 40mins.

The repeater will also be moving to a different room over the next couple of months. more info soon. Its likely to be off air for a few hours.

73 Matt

All well!

Hi All,

A long time since a post. Everything continues to work well.
The antenna is slightly bent over, which will need to be looked at sometime soon. The coverage still seems to be ok. Thanks to those that have offered Help with maintenance.

The server was off for a day due to EDF work in the area. The repeaters however continued to work well on battery backup, a good chance to test the backup system. The site suffers from quite a few power outages in the winter, so the backup power is definatally needed.

GB7FK was well used for Lighthouse / Lightships on the air weekend, great to have so many contacts.

We will be hosting a School to school linkup again sometime in December with our friends from the Temple amateur radio club.

more news soon.
73 Matt

First post of 2010!

Hi all,

This is the first post here for a long time. A few updates:-

The gateway experienced issues towards the end of 2009. This was a problem with the internet provider. It took a while to sort, but is now working as normal.
The Repeaters will be moving during this year to another part of the site. the new network cabling and power supply needs to be installed before the move can take place, as well as antenna coax runs being re-routed.

If anyone has a spare DSTAR Controller, please get in touch !

thats it for now
Matt

School DSTAR Contact

On the 5th October pupils at St Marys Catholic School in Deal had a contact via DSTAR with St Marys Catholic School in Temple Texas.

The children prepared questions to ask each other, which included sports, television, class subjects and culture.

The children had presentations at both schools before the contact to learn more about amateur radio. They were very excited, and enjoyed the project.

Thanks must go to Brian G8ZYZ for helping putting together the presentation, to Catherine M1CVF for her presentation, and to Steve NU5D and all at the Temple Amateur Radio club for making this contact possible.

looking forward to the next one

Matt M1CMN
GB7FK DSTAR Repeater,
Folkestone, Kent.

No post here for ages!

Hi all,

well there have been no posts here for ages! - the repeater continues to work well, with no problems reported.
We have recently played with some ID1 Radios, with great results. I hope we can play with high speed digital data again sometime in the future.

Upcoming projects - will probably be to find a new gateway PC. something that takes less energy to run. At the moment, we have a great rackmount server, but my electicity bill is sky high, and there isnt much else on in the house!!

more updates soon
73 Matt

Battery Backup

GB7FK and GB7DX both have backup power supplies for the repeaters now.

the repeaters will last for many hours during a power fail, and the gateway servers and routers will last around 90mins.

thanks to Declan for his hard work setting up and playing with this kit.

73 Matt

GB7FK New PSU, and New Server

Hi all,

over Christmas and January we installed a new rackmount power supply for the repeater, and added a rackmount server.

the next project will be when the weather gets better, we will experement with some different antennas on the 2m module.