DAREN of WV News May 24, 2009 (.880)
Kenneth Harris WA8LLM (304) 679-3470 wa8llm@yahoo.com
WOOD COUNTY EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS
P.O. BOX 3328, PARKERSBURG, WV 26103
http://www.wc8ec.com
DAREN News, are articles and information about the Digital Amateur Radio "Emergency" Network of WV, which operates on 145.69 MHz. Anyone having any information about DAREN, or Amateur Radio in general, and would like to share it with others, may send it to WA8LLM @ PKBGWV on 145.69 MHz, or to my E-Mail: wa8llm@yahoo.com. A State Wide DAREN NET is operated every Saturday from 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm, and lately, before and after those hours. The DAREN Net Announcement, showing the MAIN NCS, ALTERNATE NCS, NODEs accessible to both, and the previous week's check-ins, are posted by Thursday on most of the Main county DAREN PBBS'. The DAREN News can also be found on the wc8ec.com website.
Not much to report this week, so I'll just ramble on for awhile. I've been working on the Wood County Emergency Communications 147.255 MHz voice repeater after the tower site where it was located was hit by lightening. I did get the Ritchie County NODE/PBBS of RITCWV/HRVLWV, which is at the same site, back on the air, but it may be awhile before I get the Chatroom "DAREN" back in operation. I haven't checked the Chatroom TNC yet to see what kind of trouble it might have. To get a voice repeater back on the air I tied a couple of Alinco transceivers together. One of the transceivers is a UHF DR-435 which is being used as a scanning Link Receiver for the various Remote Receivers located around the county. A Two Meter DR-135 is being used as the transmitter for the repeater. The DR-435 scans the Remote Receiver UHF link frequencies and re-transmits the first one it hears. The repeater doesn't have a tail, a courtesy beep, or an Identifier on it yet, but it there is a usable repeater available.
The regular Wood County NODE/PBBS of WOODWV/PKBGWV, which went off the air around April 17th, still hasn't been worked on. There is a temporary NODE/PBBS at my house until I can find the time to go to the tower site and change out the TNC on the regular station. I think the regular station TNC has some kind of problem in it that makes it go brain dead. When it went defective, it may have caused the transceiver to be keyed up for an extended time, I just hope the radio is okay. I never thought about it before, but even Packet Radio transceivers should have their "Time Out Timer" set to shut the radio down after two or three minutes to protect them. Most packet transmissions doesn't last over 20 seconds. I really liked the regular WOODWV/PKBGWV TNC because you could set it up to allow up to ten operators to connect to the PBBS at the same time. While it was working I had it set up to allow five operators to be connected, posting and retrieving messages. I will have to let feature go until I can get another Kantronics KPC-3 with version 9.0 or higher firmware.
Speaking of Kantronics, I need to send them an E-Mail to see if they have ever found out why the "STAY" command on the Version 9.0 and higher TNC won't work. I wrote about it in the February 22nd DAREN News. The last time I heard from them, they wee going to set up some TNCs on a test bench and see what is going wrong. If I get a chance in the next few days I'll drop them another E-Mail.
Well, that's all I have for this week. If you don't want to hear me rumble on, send me something else that I can put in the News. Also be sure to check out the www.wc8ec.com website for the Radio-A-Day Give Away. There are still tickets for sale.
There were 62 check-ins to this week's State Wide DAREN Net. John Western, KC8ODI, who's been participating in the net since March 13, 2004, has completed 250 check-ins, and will be receiving his certificate. Lee Mairs, KM4YY, needs only one more check-in to make 50.