Well, I found the Brentwood VARA radio has gone deaf. No wonder nobody can get into it. Figured it out when I did some work and replaced an antenna at Van Buren for VARA there since I wasn't sure which one was a culprit. Come to find out they both were violating my rules of YOU MUST WORK! Bad VARA.
Now Van Buren's VARA works for what it is (antenna still needs a trip up a tower its only 20' off the ground at a site, and I'll be doing that soon weather permitting) but Brentwood didn't hear it. Van Buren hears Brentwood fine. After some troubleshooting, yeah, need a new radio at Brentwood. Well, I have one on stand by and will place it there next week.
After all the Brentwood and Van Buren VARA troubleshooting, I also have a new repeater going into service for Baxter/Mountain Home. Hopefully the UPS Santa drivers show up today (12/5) and its all in one piece. It's a 100% duty cycle Vertex I'll be benching today and testing and may have it on site as early as Friday, 12/6. We'll see. I do like shiny new stuff, well new to me anyway. The current repeater in Baxter will probably come to Flippin, get on the bench and replace the Flippin Frankenpeeter in order to move it to a better site. I'm not putting this sketchy repeater anywhere but in a box after this ha ha. Funny thing, it works pretty well. Can't complain. But yes I can, and do.
AAAAnnnndd...Back on DMR! Got my replacement Pi-Star since my original one went missing into the ether of moving. I hate moving. I hope I'm done now for awhile, but I digress. DMR is back in my repertoire and working again.
I also have Hamshack Hotline fired up! My HH number is HH-6103246. It's on at the desk 24/7-ish when I'm home. I will probably integrate this into my repeater system so its another tool to use, should anyone want it. Hamshack Hotline is a VoIP service for communications between emergency service/Auxcomm groups, EOC's and other ancillary network needs. I figured I'd get it spun up just as another resource. Linky HERE
I got an Autopatch working on my Baxter repeater, well, mostly. I am going to be migrating Baxter from Ham VoIP to ASL3 for additional features, VPN access that actually works and has an up to date kernel, as well as autopatch functions that work properly. Mason, N5LSN wrote a great program/setup to integrate Autopatch into ASL3 and it works like a beauty. I actually envy his skillsets as his programs are absolutely stellar. I'll share more on those pages once its completely set. It will still have his SkywarnPlus features also because as a weather geek I can't live without it.
That's enough for this week. I'll post a blog when the updates are done, as well as redo some pages with current or more updated information.
On an additional side note, I do appreciate people reaching out to me with different questions and am thankful all are using the systems. They're there for you to use. I do this blog to share what I'm doing mostly because its a place for me to track progress and keep a digital list of to do's and got-dones for myself, per se, but hams are interested so here we are and I share it. Thanks for stopping by! -Chris, NA0D
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