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.

Kent-Net - DSTAR Weekly Net

Hi all,

Thanks to all those that joined the Boxing Day net this evening. It was a real success. Thanks also to Declan for being net controller, it worked very well.We plan to follow the same format on a regular basis.

The net will be every Tuesday evening at 8pm.

The repeaters will be connected to Reflector 13a from 8pm.
GB7DX B, GB7FK C, and GB7IC B
A reminder to all users to ensure they have there RPT2 set to GB7XX G if not you will not be heard by everyone on the net.

GB7FK users ensure you are using the memory labled GB7FK CG
GB7DX users ensure you are using the memory labled GB7DX BG


Hope to hear you on the Tuesday evening "Kent-Net"

73 Matt M1CMN
Declan M0TMX

Welcome to all new users..

Well there have been many new users recently, welcome to some of the new users -

Peter G0NQZ in Eastbourne who can access GB7FK on ports B and C

Paul M0LRE who has been on DSTAR for a while but can now get into GB7FK C from Eastbourne

Barry G7MSC from Ripple near Deal in Kent

Paul 2E0AYY who has borrowed a radio, and Don 2E0DJF who has recently purchased a E92.

Welcome to everyone, hope you have fun!
73 Matt

Boxing Day DSTAR Net for Kent

Hi all,
We have arranged for a Local DSTAR Net on Boxing Day for all those that would like to join in.
The net will be at 8pm on Boxing Day night on reflector 5C
We will link GB7DX B, GB7FK C, and GB7IC B to the reflector.

Declan M0TMX will be net controller and will call out at 8pm and ask for call ins
To prevent doubling with each other, and to make sure everyone can have an opportunity to participate in the Net we are proposing to have a controlled net, where everyone gets an over and then hands back to Net Control, Net Control will then pass it onto the next station in the list.

In addition we thought that a good way to check into the net would be to do what they do in the US, as Net Control calls for Checkins, any stations wishing to take part can just key up for a second to send their callsign and Net Control can register it and call stations in one at a time.
Look forward to catching you on Boxing Day
73
Matt M1CMN Declan M0TMX