The EchoStation Experiment

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