Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
  • You can now help support WorldwideDX when you shop on Amazon at no additional cost to you! Simply follow this Shop on Amazon link first and a portion of any purchase is sent to WorldwideDX to help with site costs.
  • The Retevis Holidays giveaway winner has been selected! Check Here to see who won!

Digipeating

W

W5LZ

Crotchety Old Bastard
Apr 8, 2005
6,832
913
173
Oklahoma
Ever get so bored you were ready to try almost anything? Well. See, I got this Kenwood TM-D700 radio. Found out about APRS a while back and have had fun playing with it! Some one happened through town a few days ago and later emailed me wanting to know why there was no digipeating available here. Basically told him that it was in the local club's plans, it just hadn't reached the top of the list yet. Naturally I had to brag on my radios etc, and he asked why I didn't do local digipeating since my radio would do that. Hmm. I sure wish he'd mind his own @#$ business!
Anyway, figured I'd 'look into it', which means okay, maybe later. So I got bored. Thought, why not? So, spent the last couple of days trying to round up what I thought I needed, cables, manuals, all that stuff. Took maybe 10 minutes to find what I'd done with the @#$ manual. Then a couple of hours reading, thinking, "What the sh** does that mean?", more reading. Half a ream of paper to print the part of the manual I didn't have. Read some more.
Anyway, found out all I needed to do was bunch some buttons on the radio. No cables, or nothing! Spent some time just being amazed at stuff. Ate some aspirin (chased with Southern Comfort naturally). Took a nap? Then punched the buttons.
Okay! Now, how the @#$$ do you tell if it's working? Beats me. Thought very hard for a while, aspirin. Oh Sh**! Got one'a them APRS thingys in the truck! Turned it on. Waited. Oh my, looky there, it did something on the radio's display. What the @#$$ does that mean!? I don't know, who cares! It did something!
Most of that was yesterday, I think. Did some noodling around with 'Google APRS' and found out that the @#$^S#B was working! I am so happy! I can see several weeks of playing with power levels, moving antennas around, putting smart-axe 'comments' in that space for them, all kinds of SH**! Mercy! Won't have to do any more knitting for a while. This radio stuff is just great, ain't it??
- 'Doc


Sound silly? Yeah, so what, so am I. Besides, it keeps me out of the beer-joints. Some anyway.
 

So you set up the digipeater with just the Kenwood TM-D700 radio and the antenna? I guess I didn't realize that the TM-D700 could be a digipeater, but I never really looked into it, either. Do you have the rig hooked up to your computer so you can run it as in iGate also or are you using it as a fill-in digi?
 
That's it, just the radio, feed line and antenna.
The radio has a TNC built into it, and some memory/programing to handle the saving of the signal for retransmitting. (Simplex repeater?) It's just for a 'fill-in' for local stuff.

No, I don't have it set up for an Igate. I'm sure it could be done, but that' means I'd have to know how to do that 'setting-up' and I don't. I can't say I won't at some time, but until I do some learning about all that, it just ain't on the 'list' of things to do, sort of. Wanna mobile digipeater? The thing runs on 12 volts, so why not?
- 'Doc


(You just had to ask that, didn't you? Think I'm gonna put you in the same classification I did the guy who asked about the digipeating! And I thought I was finished with this stuff so I could start chasing bugs again. Now that's fun if you do it right! :))
 
I read that aspirin mixed with alcohol makes an acid that can burn your gastrointestinal system, increasing the possiblilty of bleeding, and the thinner, clot resistance blood does not help; or that the aspirin will make the alcohol hit your system harder (drunker).

don't think about switching to acetominephin (tylenol) either, unless you just hate your liver...

why you get watery stools after drinking is because that little gland in your brain gets fooled by the thinner blood (from alcohol) so it does not release as much diuretic hormone which causes your large intestine to not absorb as much of the water back into your blood...
 
Doc,

You caused me to fire up my MixW based digipeater again :). I was unhappy with the fact that Aprs.fi didn't like my beacon status text, so I spent the next hour or so trying to figure out manually how to put in a position report that it liked (no gps attached). Well, I finally got that figured out, so now my home location shows as a digipeater. Now if someone would come up with a new Windows based iGate application I could do that too, although that part really isn't necessary in my area. Just having a few more fill-in digis in the area is a big enough help.
 
Once upon a time, I could do programming in 'basic' (CMD Basic), which Windows doesn't like or understand, so that leaves me out! But thinking about it, what would be the big difference between an Igate and Voip? The structure of the information sent? There's bound to be a 'convention' for that structure, so all you need to do is find out what that is, gather that information, assemble it in the right structure, and send it just like a browser does. Right? So... get busy! Handle it! Handle it!
I'll wait patiently till you do... :)
- 'Doc
 
That's odd. UI-View works fine on both Vista and W-7, at least on the machines I have those OS on. It wouldn't be the maps you're having problems with, would it?
- 'Doc
 
I think it probably was the maps I was having problems with. I'll have to see if I can find the instructions again and try once more.

I almost wish I had a spare 2m rig and antenna that I could just run this stuff permanently on. Actually, I do have a spare 2m/440/6m antenna, but I'm running out of places to put antennas :)
 
If it is the maps thingy, there is a 'work around' for that. It still means you will probably end up having to buy a 'map' program unless you happen to have a very old 'map' program, and I can't think of the name of the older program right now.
There's a 'patch' for what's called 'Maps -7', which works just fine with the latest version of that thing called 'Maps-8'. Talking about something around $50. That map program is very good by the way. Oh well...
- 'Doc
 

dxChat
Help Users
  • No one is chatting at the moment.


      Top Bottom