After some issues with our prior provider, I just bit the bullet and got a slice of a virtual server online for real…
This is an image of the last 24 hours of bandwidth usage since I got all the repeaters and other reflectors moved over to it… :)…
We’ll see now what a standard month brings so we can gauge utilization.
When adding a Kenwood repeater to the network… 2 things are required.
a) you MUST turn off the Over the Air Alias on both the repeater and any users radios. If you don’t, there is a better than 50% chance that NO icom radio will hear your call which can be pretty frustrating when you’re on a WW linked system.
b) your repeater MUST run Very Narrow on the Digital side. Icom does not support 12.5khz digital, only 6.25 and so the 2 systems are not compatible unless they both are set for 6.25khz… this is a Kenwood repeater setting btw.
Ok, so it’s probably time that I created some form of table of who’s what, where :)…
We just brought up a new Kenwood site today on VHF and Norm in Tallahassee will be adding a UHF site to that a bit later.
Current list of linked systems, frequencies and RAN codes.
This morning we conducted a little test. A Kenwood Repeater, connected to a 4G Wireless router, all external IP addresses are private and will not accept incoming port forward requests.
We successfully connected the Kenwood to the WW NXDN network and carried on a conversation. :).
Stealth IP now works on the Kenwood NXREF…. yeah, no more VPN, no more static IP address, no more 15 IP limit. I think we’ve now shattered all the barriers …
Alan
Today we brought up a club in Turkey onto the WW NXDN network. This proved that we can do Kenwoods without a VPN, and it proved that we can make them work over multiple hops. I still think there is a gremlin or two to be worked out but Say Hi to The gang from Turkey.
Hi Alan,
Thank you very much for your great effort. I think we did :-))
I’m attaching the photos again. You can use them on your blog
(nxdninfo.com ) if you want.
The names and callsigns:
from left to right
Cengiz. TB2BBG.
Cemal TA2AW
Serhat TA2ANK
Serdar TA3AS
Tahir TA2T
Our Club name is ANTRAK.
I’ll always remember your help and your friendship.
Best Regards,
Serdar
So, over the last few days, i have been developing an application that will take the icom udp stream that connects repeaters together , and started decoding the stream on my pc, so far the process is working very well, and hope to have some pretty screen shots up soon. Its a windows application, and does require the ownership of a DVSI Dongle.
Oh, yeah, did i mention its windows ONLY.. sorry linux/mac guys 🙂 no java here.
For those that are looking to join in the fun.
We’re trying to allow for keeping local traffic local and net traffic on the net. In order to do that I’ve built a way to filter on Talk Group (Kenwood calls this Group ID). If you have TG 65000 programmed in your HT or Mobile and you key up, you will go out over the net side, if you have any other TG selected, you will stay local to your repeater. The opposite is true as well. The net won’t invade your local QSO until the NXREF sees no activity for a programmable amount of time, then it will allow net traffic back on the repeater. You can force this to happen immediately if the NXREF see’s the 65000 TG transmitted.
Also to better separate us out. For now we are all on RAN 1. I can translate RAN’s on the Icom side, I can’t yet on the Kenwood side.
So bottom line,
To get on the net, takes RAN 1, TG 65000, any other RAN or TG and you’ll just be talking on your local repeater.
Today I loaded the Kenwood version of the NXREF on a Raspberry Pi in TURKEY – yes, the country Turkey.
If all goes well, on Wednesday, we hope to put Turkey on the WW NXDN net. TA3AS and a club in Turkey have their NXR-710/810 repeater equipped and ready. We’ll be conducting final testing on Wednesday.
Firsts:
Stay tuned, Wednesday could be an interesting day for Amateur Radio NXDN!
Once we put the analog bridge inplace, we immediately knew that we needed a better solution. It was functional, but the audio going through a D to A and A to D phase didn’t sound that good.
I started looking at the features that the Kenwood could support and poof, found that they had an RF LINK mode. This allowed me to put the NXR-810 in that mode as a user radio on a Icom Repeater. I had to shorten the tails to 0 on both and I had to play with the priority of PTT on the Kenwood, but in the end, it allowed me to create a true digital to digital bridge.
Life is good! And now we have the Icom network and the Kenwood networks bridged, this will give us some breathing room so we can focus on other features for the Kenwood NXREF.
So for now, I’ve cobbled together a Kenwood to Icom and back analog bridge. It doesn’t sound as good as I’d have liked, but it’s not terrible either.
We’ve also moved all the Kenwood NXDN WW net over to a new NXREF, while it has no features at the moment, it does seem to work. We’ll watch it for the next few days… I actually hacked out 2 different subtype packets tonight just to see if it causes any issues… We’ll see :)…
Not to lose sight of the *FIRST*.
We have Kenwood NXDN’s talking to ICOM’s and vice a versa over the Internet. 🙂