The nodes will be off-air this lunchtime for final tweaking of the equipment. You will still be able to come in to Echolink from your phone, but it won’t be going anywhere, just into a 50ohm resistor 🙂
As usual, GB3OA repeater and the Shoutcast stream are not affected.
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.
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.
A couple of local operators have asked for technical details on relaying pilots talkback during the Southport Air Show through shoutcast.com
The normal rig that receives GB3OA transmissions is a Baofeng UV-3R. Its audio output is pumped through a sound card attached to a Raspberry Pi v.2. This uses the audio level controller Alsamixer program and then DarkIce to convert the analogue audio to digital and send it to shoutcast.com.
However, the UV-3R does not have AM nor airband to be able to receive the pilots transmissions. So a Kenwood TH-F7 HT will be used instead of the Baofeng. This rig has wide-band receive from 100kHz to 1.3GHz, and can receive CW, SSB, AM and wide and narrow FM. It can only transmit on 2m and 70cms, using wide or narrow FM.
A test with this rig was carried out earlier in the week tuned to Manchester Airport Area Control Centre on 128.050MHz and streamed to shoutcast.com. All worked well. The main frequency that will be used for the Southport Air Show will be 121.175MHz although other frequencies will be monitored and the TH-F7 retuned should another frequency be more interesting.
Note that once the TH-F7 is set up during this afternoon it will be left as is until the Air Show completes on Sunday at around 17.00BST. Therefore there will be no relaying of GB3OA during that period.
Also, the introductory announcement on the stream to shoutcast.com will change, to explain the new relay for those listening in worldwide.
We’ve put the following onto the Southgate ARC news website which feeds many clubs, as well as the ARRL news site:
This week there will be many thousands of scanner enthusiasts descending on Southport, UK for the Southport Air Show, and no doubt many of these will be hams. 2m repeater GB3OA, located next to Southport railway station, covers the beach fully at excellent strength, and has IRLP and Echolink nodes 5302. The full details for your HT memory are 145.6125, PL tone 82.5Hz and -600kHz shift. Up to 150,000 spectators will attend over the three days of Friday 15th, Sat. 16th and Sunday 17th, so a QSO is virtually guaranteed. Timeout is five minutes for RF-RF QSOs or four minutes for IRLP and Echolink, but please try to keep overs short.
The show starts at 17.35UTC on the Friday and 12.00UTC on the Saturday and Sunday. On the Friday aircraft will land on the beach and they can then be inspected up close. The Saturday and Sunday will have, amongst other attractions, bombing of the beach, twister aerobatics, kids tanks to drive, a paintball range and of course fly pasts of many classic and modern aircraft and helicopters. Full details can be found at:
http://www.military-airshows.co.uk/ven16.htm
https://www.visitsouthport.com/airshow
For those who can’t attend, the GB3OA stream on Shoutcast which normally relays the output of GB3OA repeater, will be turned over to relaying the main talkback frequency of the pilots. To hear this go to http://shoutcast.com and search for GB3OA.
The repeater keepers and Southport hams look forward to having a QSO with operators at this event and also via IRLP and Echolink through GB3OA.
The repeater keepers ask that Southport locals keep an ear on GB3OA during this period and respond to calls or CQs through GB3OA to make visitors welcome.