As Saturday always seems to be the quitest day on GB3OA and the nodes, we’ll be taking advantage of this to replace some node equipment tomorrow, Saturday 29th September 2018.
The nodes will be off-air around lunchtime or early afternoon for what may be up to several hours i.e. until the nodes are performing again as normal.
This will not affect repeater RF use nor Shoutcast streaming.
The IRLP and Echolink nodes were off-air today between 12.00 and 12.20 UTC for backup of the software. This is performed monthly, with three months of previous backups available should the present software become unstable. Apologies to anyone who tried to use the nodes between these times.
After a small amount of reburbishmemnt of the mast and aerial the IRLP and Echolink nodes are again on-air. Please feel free to test them. But it can be a bit like ships passing in the night, so I suggest to those who automatically receive this GB3OA news that they test at 10a.m., 2p.m. or 5p.m. if they wish to have a QSO.
In other news: the part of Southport Pier that runs across the sea will be closed from October 1st until Christmas for refurbishment and construction of new attractions. This means that the Pier-to-Pier Challenge as detailed in previous news items will not be able to be accomplished during this period. Briefly, it entails a QSO between the end of Southport Pier and one of Blackpool’s via GB3OA. A small ham-related prize will be awarded for the first to achieve this.
As mentioned in the previous news item the nodes had to be taken off-air last Wednesday, two days ago. After lowering the mast and aerial for the nodes in the gusty wind, a brief inspection revealed that they had suffered to some extent with the salt air. Some refurbishment therefore needs to take place but this needs to be done in dry conditions. The weather forecast for today (Friday) is for virtually continual rain and gusty conditions so unfortunately the refurbishment will have to be delayed until tomorrow (Saturday), when the weather is forecast to improve substantially over the weekend.
The repeater keepers apologise for this downtime, as there are a number of regulars as well as visitors to the town and world-wide connections who use the nodes. These include G3SEA/KH6 (Hawaii), VK5ACX (Adelaide), G0RLT/VE6 (Canada), and closer to home GW1SXT (Pontypool) and G3PNQ (Parbold).
Until the wind subsides the nodes at GB3OA have been taken 0ff-air. A further notice will appear when they are returned to normal operating.
The repeater section of GB3OA and the Shoutcast stream feed are unaffected.