2015

GB3OA New Year on-air Party

Hi Guys. Throughout New Years Eve / New Years Day, please be aware that GB3OA may get connected to various conferences / reflectors as the New Year is seen in across the globe. Feel free to join in the conversations, but it’s essential you keep your overs short since many hundreds of nodes could possibly be connected simultaneously.  Short overs means less than 60 seconds, Remember, be brief! If you wish to have a local QSO then GB3OA must be disconnected from the reflector using DTMF 73 no matter how short the local QSO is. 

The first place that has an IRLP node to celebrate the coming of 2016, at UTC + 13, is New Zealand, so that will be 11.00 hours in the UK (Chatham Island at UTC + 13.45 is the first to celebrate but has no IRLP node).

Happy New Year to all users of GB3OA!

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Lonely Planet? The Stream helps to decide

As many intelligent people know, aliens are all around us‘ – from the opening titles of NBC’s Third Rock from the Sun.

The Stream’s Raspberry Pi was only using 16% CPU and it seemed a waste to not use the rest. So running BOINC’s SETI@home to use the rest of the CPU has become the ideal answer.

SETI is an acronym for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence and its purpose is to analyse radio signals, searching for signs of extra terrestrial intelligence. You run a program on your PC, laptop, tablet, phone or Pi which takes data from the University of Berkeley and analyses it looking for any signals i.e. variations which cannot be ascribed to noise, and hence contain information.

It’s very easy to set up SETI@home on a Pi, just a few steps, and for those interested look here:

http://burdeview.blogspot.co.uk/p/raspberry-pi-boinc-project-ive-created.html

On a Pi it’s fairly slow, but at least it’s running 24/7 on The Stream’s Pi. And perhaps it might just find another Dick, Sally, Harry and Tommy*

*The comedy Third Rock from the Sun was produced from 1996 – 2001 and is now available on Netflix.

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Confirmation of various timeouts on GB3OA

To avoid confusion, the relevant web pages (Repeater Details and Internet Linking) have been changed to specify the various timeouts on OA.

They are:

  • RF to RF – five minutes (the errant PTT has to be opened to reset the timer)
  • IRLP and Echolink – four minutes, and disconnection of the distant end

Echolink will also specify an error code if the txm is more than four minutes – a link to all OA error codes can be found on the Internet Linking page.

THE STREAM: this is now fully up to spec again and running normally. It can easily be listened to throughout the world by going to http://shoutcast.com and searching for GB3OA.

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