The News

Flash! POP!

Those were the last sounds heard from the VXR 7000 2 meter repeater. We're waiting to hear back from Yaesu on what its going to cost us to replace the PSU for the machine. The lightning strike also took out W4PWB's Alinco power supply for his HF gear and 2 meter monitor rig.

If there's anyone who happens to have a power supply we'd be sure to put it to good use at the W4EWR repeater site. Same goes for just about anything we can get our hands on here.

In the meantime W4EWR is operating simplex. Our repeater computer is still working, but we can't test it without a machine to plug it into. Let's hope that the power supplies took the worst of the hit and nothing got into the other boards.

KG4KGW -

It's been a fun year at W4EWR. Keeping up with domains, hackers, club meetings, and a whole host of other issues. Setting up the repeater was another challenge for 2009-2010. We're about 60% to our goal and will continue to maintain and improve it's installation during the 2010-2011 year.

Our next big event in 2010 will be Field Day. It's only a couple months away and planning should begin for us shortly. If you are interested in planning or participating in field day events with the Elevated Wire Radio Group please let us know as soon as possible.

We will begin sending out letters to schools as summer approaches for the 2010-2011 school year. Our goal is to find teachers in the local schools who are willing to participate in ham radio educational opportunities bringing amateur radio into the classrooms. We'll be needing some sponsorship to provide learning materials to those interested at a reduced or no cost. If you would like to help with this project use the donate button on this page and be sure and list how you wish for your donation to be used.

Help keep a continued interest in experimentation alive in North America! Each year the numbers of amateurs depletes more and more as those old elmers die off and are not replaced. If you are a ham now is the time to reach out to others and build the desire to learn and expand the radio art!

Wow! I just can't say enough about how fast K1RFD responded to my request. In less than an hour of writting this short article he'd issued a new registration number for the club call.

After some debate and not without a great deal of consideration we decided to give EchoStation a try on the 145.410 repeater W4EWR Pensacola.

The install went fairly smooth. The setup is another story! The system we put in place is an old HP micro desktop. It is a fairly slow machine, but more than meets the recomendations for EchoStation.

The first major obstacle is the EchoStation site seems to be experiencing some difficulty. When I originally purchased the software I registered it under my call and not the club call. Getting this changed is not as simple as I thought and ultimately I may have to spend another $20 for another key. I've written them and am waiting to hear back now.

The audio settings seem to be extreemly sensitive. Getting the VOX tail too short gives a double courtesy beep/tone and too long leaves a long delay before the tone after someone has unkeyed. Finding a happy medium hasn't been achieved just yet. We're working on it, so it is just a matter of time.

One way to overcome this issue is to possibly use the repeaters squelch to key and unkey the transmitter. I am not sure yet if this is only open when the proper tone is present on the input, but will be testing this in the next week or so. If this is indeed the case it will cure 99% of the issues we are experiencing.

There has been a bit of difficulty figuring out how to set the remote control link due to a double stacked router. Here again a bit of study and research may yield the needed information on configuration. Even after putting the machine in the DMZ we were unable to access the page.

We'll keep tweaking it until we get it right or come up with the funds to buy a stand alone repeater controller! Wish us luck.

KG4KGW

I was a little sad to see so few people had an opinion about clubs incorporating. This is a hot topic around the country, but falls into one of those political catagories that many do not want to involve themselves.

Here are the results:

As you can see only 6 people bothered to tell us what they thought!

There is a new poll up now, go cast your vote about your beliefs concerning the FCC!