KRG News

28 Jan 2009: KIDDER Packet Node Back On Air

The packet radio node was rebooted today, following a crash. It is not known how long the system had been off.

27 Jan 2009: KRG Website Changes

A "library" section and site map have been added to the KRG website. It is hoped to populate the library with interesting material over the forthcoming months.

15th Jan 2009: New 70cm Gateway in Stourport

KRG member Tristan 2E0VXX has established a 70cm simplex Echolink gateway in Stourport, IO82UH. The frequency is 430.0625 MHz, and no CTCSS is required. The callsign on the Echolink system is 2E0VXX-L and the node number is 416696. Tristan also has NOV's for 10m and 6m.

Dec 2008: KD Gossip Rag

As reported last year, the satirical weekly publication "Not The KD News", part of the GB3KD website, was no longer being maintained, due to lack of time. It has now been replaced by a blog-style "Random News and Comment" section, with no specific publication deadlines.

Nov 2008: Winter Interference to KD

The winter QRM is back to plague us! The source is an unknown piece of electrical equipment somewhere near the repeater, and the QRM begins at dusk, gradually fading through the evening. It causes a buzzing noise which obliterates weaker signals. We are still trying to trace the source

Oct 2008: G0EWH Gateway

KRG Member Richard G0EWH is running a part time Echolink simplex gateway from his QTH in Stourbridge IO82WK. The frequency is 430.025 MHz and the Echolink node number is 306392. No CTCSS tone is required.

Sep 2008: KRG AGM

12 people attended the KRG AGM on 12th September. The main officers were re-elected, and two members replaced. Peter G7FMF takes over the post of Newsletter Editor from 2E0MJT and Tristan 2E0VXX replaces G7JWL as Ordinary Member.

1st Aug 2008: KD TCP/IP Fixed

The long-standing problem with GB3KD disappearing from the Echolink directory after approximately 3 days uptime, has finally been fixed. The fault lay in an obscure piece of code, originally written in the late 1980's as part of the PZT BBS, then ported to XRouter before ending up in XSock, the TCP/IP stack which gives 'KD its Internet connectivity. The reason it had proved so difficult to trace, is that it was a quirk of 16 bit number handling which only happened as a result of a combination of rare and unpredictable conditions. Each time it happened, it left a TCP connection hanging open, consuming resources, until XSock ran out of TCP handles. The code has now been fixed.

Jul 2008: KRG Meeting

On 15th July, 18 people attended the KRG meeting, which included a talk and practical demonstration of Echolink and link hardware. Paula also brought along one of the cavities borrowed from GB3KD, to show people what cavities looked like.

May 2008: New 2m Simplex Gateway in Bewdley

KRG member, Peter G7FMF, has established a simplex Echolink gateway at Gorst Hill, between Rock and Far Forest, locator IO82TI. The callsign is MB7IWF, frequency 145.2875 MHz, and a 118.8Hz CTCSS tone is required. Echolink node number is 331640. The system is currently on test and only available for a few hours each day

Mar 2008: Jerry Passes Away

One of GB3KD's regulars, Jerry VA3JET, sadly passed away on 10th March, following a long battle with cancer.

19th Mar 2008: KD Mast Reinstated

John G8UAE has re-erected GB3KD's aerial mast, which fell down last week. All the existing guys had perished, so 3 new guys were fitted, attached slightly higher up the mast. One of the radials had fallen off, but luckily has been retrieved from the woods. It will be refitted when the mast is replaced. The coverage seems to be back to normal, and the missing radial does not seem to be causing any noticeable problems.

18th Mar 2008: KRG Meeting

13 people attended the March KRG meeting, and after the formal section of the meeting, Richard G0EWH handed out some leaflets and gave a talk on D-star.

14th Mar 2008: Router Failure

Early on 14th March the internet router machine developed another hard drive fault (bad sectors), causing GB3KD and all the packet systems to be off the internet for a few hours. This was quickly resolved with the aid of some DOS tools. It may be a one-off, or may be a sign that this hard drive is failing too. Paula notes that she seems to wake up to a new problem every day!

12th Mar 2008: KD Mast Falls Over

In the early hours of 12th March, the high winds caused one of the guy ropes to fail, and the mast fell over. Luckily it fell to the North and was caught by the trees, otherwise it would have smashed into the house. It needs new guys and some muscle to pull it back. The guys had been up around 3 years and were checked regularly, but must have failed due to UV degradation. The aerial is very much slant polarised at the moment and coverage is poor.

Mar 2008: Loss of Domain

The hard drive on G8PZT's computer failed catastrophically on 10th Feb, and it took a month to recover some of the data and rebuild a minimal system. During this time the domain name for the packet and repeater system expired, but Paula didn't get the reminder because she had no email facility. Consequently, parts of the system were not connectible from the internet for a while. Normal Echolink function was not affected.

2nd Feb 2008: GB3KD Connection Timeouts

Users with the latest version of the Echolink software and a router may sometimes experience difficulty connecting to GB3KD. You may hear the repeater announce that someone has connected, only to hear them time out and disconnect a minute later. A normal Echolink connection is held alive by the regular exchange of UDP packets. What's happening in this case is that their UDP packets are reaching 'KD, but the return packets from 'KD aren't able to get back through their router, because they haven't "opened" UDP ports 5198 and 5199.

With the old versions of Echolink, it was imperative to open these ports if a router/firewall was installed. But version 2 includes a workaround which enables it in most cases to connect to other peers running version 2, even if the ports haven't been opened. In other words it encourages laziness. The problem is, this workaround doesn't work if the peer is running an old version of Echolink, so it is still necessary to open the ports in order to connect to these peers.

GB3KD behaves as if it was running Echolink version 1.6. Anyone who wishes to connect to it MUST therefore open their UDP ports. It doesn't use the Echolink program, so it cannot easily be upgraded until the exact details of the new protocol have been discovered.

2nd Feb 2008: Packet Radio System

For the last few months, the 2m access port on 144.850 MHz has been very unreliable, due to a faulty t/r relay in the rig. This is now fully repaired, and was reinstated on 2/2/08. The 70cm access port on 432.675 MHz was also suspect, as it hadn't heard a signal in months. However, the rig was removed for testing, and appears to be working correctly. The port was reinstated on 2/2/08.

The links with Abdon Burf, Malvern and Birdlip are off line due to faulty receivers, and the link with the newly-reinstated Clee Hill node is not yet in operation because the TNC EPROM needs re-blowing to cater for FEC operation. Thus none of the RF links are operating at present. The Internet linking continues to provide connectivity with wider the network however.

2nd Feb 2008: Websites

The "Not The KD News" (NTKDN) section of the GB3KD website is not currently being maintained, due to a lack of time. This is a popular section of the site, and will be updated as and when the author has some free time. Meanwhile, if you think you could help with the intelligence gathering or writing, please contact Paula.

Other Local News

29 Jan 2009: February KDARS Meeting

On Tuesday 3rd February, KDARS will be showing 3 DVD's from the RSGB. One is titled 'Valveman' and is the life story of Gerald Wells who ended up with an enormous collection of valves.

The second is about amateur radio operation from the Space Shuttle and the third is a documentary of an expedition to 3B7C to set up a special event station. Venue is the Chain Wire Club, Kidderminster, 8.00p.m. start.

27 Jan 2009: GB3BY Closes Down

The GB3BY 50MHz repeater, located near Bromsgrove, was closed down permanently on Sunday 25th January 2009 due to what Nigel G8OXG described as "ongoing unsolveable interference problems at site ". The repeater was originally located in Bewdley (hence the callsign), but was later moved to Kidderminster because of interference problems. After a number of years in Kidderminster, it moved to Bromsgrove, again due to interference, but the problem was never solved. With mounting costs and no local support, WFRG have decided to close it permanently.

27 Jan 2009: GB3SV to Close

The Stourport 70cm repeater GB3SV (433.100 MHz) went off air on 24th January 2009, with an aerial fault. Keeper Mike, G1ZRN has requested a close down due to high running costs and lack of activity.

27 Jan 2009: GB3KR Off Air

Kidderminster 70cm repeater GB3KR (433.075MHz) is temporarily off air due to receiver and aerial faults. Wyre Forest Repeater Group have decided to refurbish KR with the change of UHF base station, new logic and a new aerial, and hope to have the repeater back on air as soon as possible.

Dec 2008: Echolink Network Continues Growth

There are now up to 4700 Echolink stations online at any time, an increase of around 20% since the start of the year.

28 Nov 2008: Fourpak Considers Winding-up

At its 2008 AGM, the Four Counties Packet Radio Group (Fourpak) discussed the future of the group, and it seems likely that the group will be wound up, with the remaining packet radio systems being transferred to the care of KRG and Gloucestershire Repeater Group.

Nov 2008: Yaesu VX8 Released

A new Yaesu handheld is now available. The VX8, like the its predecessor the VX7, is a 5 watt tri band (6m/2m/70cm) submersible transceiver, with wide band receive capability. New features include an inbuilt ferrite bar aerial for AM broadcast band reception (which was poor on the VX7's whip aerial), stereo FM broadcast reception via headphones (VX7 was mono), the ability to use ordinary dry cells instead of the Li-ion pack, plus barometric and temperature sensors (these were optional on VX7). There are also options for GPS/APRS operation, and Bluetooth.

It's not as good as it sounds however. GPS requires an unwieldy and vulnerable unit (not supplied) to be plugged into the speaker/mic socket via an adaptor (not supplied), or into the speaker/mic (not supplied). Bluetooth appears to need at least 2 optional extras (not supplied), and the battery adaptor for using alkaline cells is - yes you guessed it - not supplied.

One of the major irritations with the VX7 was the lack of a proper squelch control, the user having to wade through a series of obscure menus to find the adjustment. Not easy with anything less than perfect eyesight! With the VX8, Yaesu have taken this one step further and dispensed with the volume control too.

When you strip away all the hype, the only thing the basic radio offers over the VX7 is the stereo FM facility, everything else is an option. And in order to allow a ferrite bar aerial to be incorporated, the case is probably now plastic instead of die-cast aluminium, so expect the RF shielding to be poor (VX7 shielding was excellent). Despite the APRS option, this radio doesn't seem to be a serious contender for the APRS market.

Oct 2008: MB7UBY 2M APRS UI-Server

As a result of a request from M0BPQ, WFRG have co-sited an APRS server with 70cm D-Star repeater GB7WF in Bewdley (IO82UJ). The frequency is 144.800 MHz, callsign MB7UBY, and it uses a dual band collinear. Generic digipeating of GBRn-n and WIDEn-n are enabled. Software is UI-View32, running on a 333MHz PC. The digipeater provides good coverage over the region, including large parts of the M5 and the southern section of the M42, filling in a gap in the APRS network.

Sep 2008: GB7GH Packet Node to Close

Gloucestershire Repeater Group Commitee have decided that they will close their oldest established Packet Node GB7GH, which is located on the edge of the Cotswold Escarpment, by the end of March 2009. This decision has been made due to the decline in AX25 Packet radio use and the ever increasing costs of operating and maintaining remote sites.

The decline in AX25 use means that most of the ports used at GB7GH are redundant. The remaining operational links will be re-engineered to maintain the RF connectivity between the GB7LGS-9 Node (with its Internet connection) in Cheltenham, and the MLVN (G4FPV) Node and GB7GLO BBS in Malvern, thus maintaining access to the Cheltenham DXCluster system for the remaining users of the MLVN Node.

June 2008: D-Star Dongle

For around £150 it is now possible to buy a "dongle" which plugs into a PC USB port, allowing full transmit/receive operation on the D-Star network without a radio.

The dongle contains the special DVSI AMBE codec chip that encodes and decodes D-Star audio. A fairly fast PC running XP or Vista is required, the suggested minimum configuration for a PC being 2.0GHz CPU with 512 MB RAM.

May 2008: New Simplex Gateway in Stourbridge

G3PWJ has obtained an NOV allowing him to operate a simplex gateway on 145.3375 MHz, using a 67 Hz CTCSS from his location in Stourbridge IO82wk.

May 2008: GB3BM Is Back!

The GB3BM (Birmingham) repeater, which had been QRT for many years, had been resurrected on 145.6625 MHz with 67Hz CTCSS. It is now located by the mosque in Sparkbrook.

Apr 2008: GB7WF D-star Repeater

Wyre Forest Repeater Group have commissioned their 70cm D-Star repeater in Bewdley, IO82UJ. The callsign is GB7WF, and the channel is RU759, which has its output on 439.4875 MHz, and the input on 430.4875MHz. The equipment comprises an Icom IDRP4000V transceiver and an Icom ID-RP2C controller. The aerial is a VHF/UHF dual-band collinear.

Mar 2008: GB3BY Back In Kidderminster

The GB3BY 6 metre repeater, which had moved to Bromsgrove, is back in Kidderminster, temporarily.

Mar 2008: Local D-Star Exhibited

At the Wythall rally, Wyre Forest Repeater Group were exhibiting their new D-Star 70cm repeater, GB7WF. They are also planning to implement a 2m D-Star repeater in the area. D-star is digital voice and low speed data

Feb 2008: IC-E92 D-Star Handheld

The Icom IC-E92 is a dual band (2m/70cm) 5W handheld, and probably the only one to have D-Star included as standard.

It is ruggedised and fully submersible (IPX7 rating), has a wideband receiver, over 1300 memories, a simple uncluttered layout, band-scope, DTMF memories, and the ability for full remote control using a PC. It has "proper" knobs for volume and frequency/squelch/menu navigation. This seems to be an excellent handheld for around £340.