EchoLink

The following update was sent to the ukrepeater site:

GB3OA LINKING UPDATE: IRLP and Echolink are no longer available. While the repeater is licensed for most digital modes, none are currently provided. Plans underway for a move to Analogue / C4FM repeater at some point in the future.

For those that have been following these pages, you’ve almost certainly noticed that it’s not been updated for quite some time now. We apologise for that since quite a lot has changed. Our good friend G4TUP became SK back in July 2019, David was largely responsible for keeping the web site up to date and since then everything has been rather low key due to COVID and other priorities.

For this update we’ll concentrate on what’s changed, a future missive will address what ideas we’re having for the future.

As far as the (RF) hardware, location, aerial etc, nothing has changed, coverage should be much the same as it has ever been. We do need to start looking towards hardware replacement since the gear was already old when we installed it back in 2006. At least it shows equipment was made to last all those years ago!

What we’ve lost is IRLP & Echolink internet linking. There are numerous reasons for this but let’s not dig too deep into that story just now. While it’s entirely plausible we could resurrect it, since IRLP & Echolink came onto the scene, other digital modes are also now available and our collective view was that we maybe should look towards those modes. More of that in a future post.

We’ve also lost ‘The Stream”. There was a monthly outlay required for this, and looking at the level of utilisation, it soon became clear it was not adding anything of any value.

Many of the existing pages of the website that are no longer relevant have moved under a heading titled ‘Outdated’. The old pages simply reside there to provide a little nostalgia. The remaining pages that are still on the menu have been tweaked to ensure they’re now up to date with the latest situation.

If you’re looking at the ukrepeater.net entry for GB3OA you’ll see the repeater is now licensed for all digital modes, this was as a result of the latest NOV renewal. At the time we were not sure what digital modes we’d need, so we applied for them all. What you need to know is that while the repeater is licensed for them, there is no hardware at the moment to support them. We shall send a update to the ukrepeater site shortly stating the same. What (digital) modes we chose to support (if any) is still being discussed. You’d be surprised at just how many people still like the idea and simplicity of a local coverage, analogue only repeater.

We now have a small group of individuals who act as a ‘core’ when we’re making decisions on what plans we have for the repeater. This group was formed prior to COVID, and sadly has not been able to meet up since, although we’re looking to get the ball rolling on that score before too long.

In the meantime, feel free to continue to use GB3OA. To be honest, it’s used so little that if the hardware were to fail tomorrow we’d be hard pressed to justify replacing it.

Mark G4EID / KM8H and the GB3OA team.

Further to the last news item, we’re pleased to report that the internet connection issues have been resolved and as a result, IRLP and EchoLink are now back in service on GB3OA.

The final tweaking of the nodes took place successfully today and the nodes are now running at 100%, as was proved by several caliber QSOs this afternoon.

Points to note: timeout is four minutes on both the IRLP and Echolink nodes – five minutes using RF-to-RF through GB3OA repeater. If you exceed the time on Echolink the link will be disconnected.