K7HIO.NET - Repeater, Paging, DSTAR, Station

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02/07/10--09:10: Amateur Paging as a Notification Mechanism (chan 1899522)

A while back, there was a push in the county (and district, I believe) ARES leadership to establish a notification mechanism other than the telephone.  The motivation behind this was that if something happens and the amateur radio emergency operators are activated, we need a way to get in touch with people that might not be aware that something is going on. Most response scenarios start out with "What do you do after you feel the quake?" which makes notification rather unimportant.  However, what about people outside the affected area being notified that a response is needed?

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02/13/10--09:35: Hardware Choices (chan 1899522)

We settled on some used Motorola synthesized POCSAG VHF pagers: Advisor Gold and Advisor Elite models.  These can be had on eBay and elsewhere for approximately $30.  They are well-built and survive a lot of abuse and run for months on a single AA battery.  They are synthesized units, which means we can plug any frequency in that we want, as well as up to four individual or group capcodes.  With a programming cradle and the software, we were able to program the capcodes and frequencies into the pagers without too much trouble.

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02/13/10--17:15: Fixing the "trouble" pagers (chan 1899522)

All of the pagers we're using are "previously loved", which means that some of them are a little flaky when being programmed.  The programming cable is designed with two tall spring-loaded pins that need to enter holes on the pack of the pager to hit the programming contacts inside.  Some of the pagers seem to have no problem with this, with others the pins only occasionally make proper contact.  When this happens, we see the following message from the programming software:

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02/15/10--11:26: New Antenna (chan 1899522)

On Saturday, a small group of us installed our first new antenna since relocating to Ronler Acres Fire Station. We attached a Comet GP-98 to the strut on the side of the building. K7JDF was staged on top of the roof and K7TAY was on the ladder, while KK7DS watched from down below.

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03/06/10--17:37: Mapping pager coverage (chan 1899522)

Now that all the pagers are behaving and we've got the transmitter hardware mostly set, we had two questions to answer:

1. What is our coverage footprint?
2. Which baud rate should we choose?

The first one is mostly out of our control, we just need to see if having the transmitter at a low-level site is good enough to cover the people we're interested in notifying.

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03/26/10--16:16: Hi-Speed D-STAR Active (chan 1899522)

It's no secret that K7HIO has been ahead of the rest of the area in using low-speed D-STAR for quite some time now.  Since 2008, we have been transferring files and messages around the county using D-RATS with much success.

The hi-speed D-STAR has taken longer to get into place because of the cost of the equipment, lack of antennas, and short coax runs.  Six months ago (almost to the day), KK7DS put the county's hi-speed data repeater module up in our cabinet on top of the Synopsys building in Hillsboro.  Aside from a little bit of testing a few days later, it has been dormant...until now.

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06/08/10--11:41: Building Power-Down Test (chan 1899522)

On June 3, 2010 the City of Hillsboro performed a full power-down test at the Ronler site.  This gave us an opportunity to see the automatic generator transfer switch in action, as well as test our own backup power capabilities.  The test was true to life, in that the facilities person turned off the main power at the disconnect switch, simulating an immediate total power loss.

Within seconds, we received notification of the power outage via pager:



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07/20/11--12:08: Weather Radio Controller on the K7HIO Repeater (chan 1899522)

The K7HIO team recently installed a home-built weather radio controller on the repeater. This causes NWS alerts and tests to come through the repeater's transmitter, allowing responders to monitor a single radio during the day and also get those alerts. Here's what it looks like from the receiver's perspective:

 

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01/22/12--11:02: January Meeting Agenda (chan 1899522)

Our meeting begins at 1800 sharp.  Items for discussion include, but are not limited to, the following:

1.) Selection of new Station Manager

2.) Selection of Assistant Station Manager

3.) Health & Welfare Update

4.) ARES Items:

      a.) Spring Set

      b.) D1 Coastal Net

      c.) County Exercise

5.) Facility credentials report.

6.) K7HIO member contact info update

7.) Work Party items:

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