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New digi in DuPage County

 
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ka9scf  



Joined: 17 Jun 2005
Posts: 34
Location: Lombard

PostPosted: Fri Jun 17, 2005 10:31 am    Post subject: New digi in DuPage County Reply with quote

Hi All,

For a year now I've worked on setting up my dad's site WB9WLS with an
APRS station and 2 weeks ago we were successful on getting everything
setup. I've set the station using his call because the intension was to
give him access to the application I was using his tower real estate for.
Subsequently, he became interested in the coverage and I've been tracking
this since the time the station came on the air. The station consists of
the following:

* Sinclair Station Master antenna (6db omni, 22 foot long) cut for 146.52
fed with 200 feet of RG-214U up at 80 feet AGL
* Icom IC-281H running about 35 watts after the GE bandpass cavity
* Xastir Linux running to an MFJ-1270B in KISS mode

I've made several conclusions about the APRS network in the Dupage county
area:

1. The station covers a substantial area - Direct paths to NS9RC,
W9AZ-15, WB9WOZ-15 and N9IJ-10.

2. The station's coverage area is redundant to everywhere except west.

In the couple weeks the station has operated, I used the stock Xastir
source code to compile a station that has both RELAY and WIDE1-1 digi
capability. Doing so has increased the traffic on the APRS network in the
Chicagoland area significantly. The coverage of the station filled in
many gaps (along with great coverage of I-355 to almost I-55) but a lot of
times packets were duped unessesarily. I also
noticed that mobile stations in the area didn't have optimal paths setup
to take advantage of the network. I've changed the source code in Xastir
to allow for "white list" capability. With this I can code in callsigns
of stations that were using a path such as WIDE3-3 or WIDE2-2 that were up
to that point never repeated. The code allowed a single retransmission of
the packet and subbed the station's call in place of their unheard
WIDEn-N
packet. This allowed the station to be retransmitted once and inserted
into APRS-IS. My dad's station can hear at least 5 other Igate stations
so transmitting once is enough to get into APRS-IS. Recently it was
desided that we stop supporting RELAY and go with WIDE1-1 only and include
basic Igate support. The impact to the network is better now as many
mobiles still use the old RELAY path.

My dad and I came to the conclusion that we should place a directional
antenna up to remove the redundancy to the east, north and south. We
desided that a corner reflector would be the best bet and to point it WSW
toward the I-88 corridor. On the map, the Naperville area is largely void
from APRS activity. A corner reflector effectly will drop traffic from
the very busy northern suburbs to noise floor activity. The corner
reflector's pattern is -30db for 180 degrees of the pattern.


Back around 1998 I asked about the usefulness of WIDE coverage and was
told that the most desired would be to set one up in the
Naperville/Aurora area. While we are in Lombard (about 10 miles east)
with directional coverage, would WIDEn-N coverage be needed or would a
straight digi still be ok? I traveled to western Aurora last year and
WB9WOZ-15 didn't cover well that far out and there was nothing else
there. I'm more concerned of getting the area covered and inserted into
APRS-IS. WIDEn-N SSn-N is useful for terrestrial coverage but not
required from the internet perspective. The height of the antenna would
be about 77 feet and the tree canopy is about 65 feet currently in the
area.

I notice also that the AT&T/Lucent club station is running old RELAY and
WIDE. It's in the DuPage river valley and doesn't cover my area
(northern Lombard) well.

The move to a directional antenna allows us to shorten the feedline run.
This will improve performance.

Let me know what your thoughts are on this. I want to place the resource
in the most optimal configuration for the network. I'm happy that I can
actually use APRS reliably from home now.

73 de Pat --- KA9SCF.
[pgreen@luna Desktop]$ cat newwide
Hi All,

For a year now I've worked on setting up my dad's site WB9WLS with an
APRS station and 2 weeks ago we were successful on getting everything
setup. I've set the station using his call because the intension was to
give him access to the application I was using his tower real estate for.
Subsequently, he became interested in the coverage and I've been tracking
this since the time the station came on the air. The station consists of
the following:

* Sinclair Station Master antenna (6db omni, 22 foot long) cut for 146.52
fed with 200 feet of RG-214U up at 80 feet AGL
* Icom IC-281H running about 35 watts after the GE bandpass cavity
* Xastir Linux running to an MFJ-1270B in KISS mode

I've made several conclusions about the APRS network in the Dupage county
area:

1. The station covers a substantial area - Direct paths to NS9RC,
W9AZ-15, WB9WOZ-15 and N9IJ-10.

2. The station's coverage area is redundant to everywhere except west.

In the couple weeks the station has operated, I used the stock Xastir
source code to compile a station that has both RELAY and WIDE1-1 digi
capability. Doing so has increased the traffic on the APRS network in the
Chicagoland area significantly. The coverage of the station filled in
many gaps (along with great coverage of I-355 to almost I-55) but a lot of
times packets were duped unessesarily. I also
noticed that mobile stations in the area didn't have optimal paths setup
to take advantage of the network. I've changed the source code in Xastir
to allow for "white list" capability. With this I can code in callsigns
of stations that were using a path such as WIDE3-3 or WIDE2-2 that were up
to that point never repeated. The code allowed a single retransmission of
the packet and subbed the station's call in place of their unheard
WIDEn-N
packet. This allowed the station to be retransmitted once and inserted
into APRS-IS. My dad's station can hear at least 5 other Igate stations
so transmitting once is enough to get into APRS-IS. Recently it was
desided that we stop supporting RELAY and go with WIDE1-1 only and include
basic Igate support. The impact to the network is better now as many
mobiles still use the old RELAY path.

My dad and I came to the conclusion that we should place a directional
antenna up to remove the redundancy to the east, north and south. We
desided that a corner reflector would be the best bet and to point it WSW
toward the I-88 corridor. On the map, the Naperville area is largely void
from APRS activity. A corner reflector effectly will drop traffic from
the very busy northern suburbs to noise floor activity. The corner
reflector's pattern is -30db for 180 degrees of the pattern.


Back around 1998 I asked about the usefulness of WIDE coverage and was
told that the most desired would be to set one up in the
Naperville/Aurora area. While we are in Lombard (about 10 miles east)
with directional coverage, would WIDEn-N coverage be needed or would a
straight digi still be ok? I traveled to western Aurora last year and
WB9WOZ-15 didn't cover well that far out and there was nothing else
there. I'm more concerned of getting the area covered and inserted into
APRS-IS. WIDEn-N SSn-N is useful for terrestrial coverage but not
required from the internet perspective. The height of the antenna would
be about 77 feet and the tree canopy is about 65 feet currently in the
area.

I notice also that the AT&T/Lucent club station is running old RELAY and
WIDE. It's in the DuPage river valley and doesn't cover my area
(northern Lombard) well.

The move to a directional antenna allows us to shorten the feedline run.
This will improve performance.

Let me know what your thoughts are on this. I want to place the resource
in the most optimal configuration for the network. I'm happy that I can
actually use APRS reliably from home now.

73 de Pat --- KA9SCF.
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ka9scf  



Joined: 17 Jun 2005
Posts: 34
Location: Lombard

PostPosted: Tue Aug 16, 2005 12:14 pm    Post subject: SSn support added Reply with quote

Hi All,

I've reconfigured the linux box to operate the KISS TNC from the kernel directly. As a result I can run DIGINED and Xastir concurrently. WB9WLS is now only an I-Gate. DIGINED as KA9SCF-15 will handle all the digipeating operations now. IL3 suport has been added. WIDEn-N support will not be added with this antenna configuration. There is nothing new that would *enhance* the network running as a WIDEn-N except more traffic. Directional antenna configurations will be tried next year to improve westerly coverage.

73 de Pat --- KA9SCF.
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ka9scf  



Joined: 17 Jun 2005
Posts: 34
Location: Lombard

PostPosted: Fri Oct 07, 2005 1:03 pm    Post subject: WB9WLS/KA9SCF-15 down but not out Reply with quote

The power supply fan in the computer that runs the WB9WLS I-Gate and the KA9SCF-15 digi is overheating. This has been causing the recent and more more frequent outages. I'm going to be moving the combo over to the KA9SCF-10 UHF 9600 box. This change will occur this evening.

73 de Pat --- KA9SCF
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ka9scf  



Joined: 17 Jun 2005
Posts: 34
Location: Lombard

PostPosted: Fri Oct 07, 2005 10:15 pm    Post subject: WB9WLS/KA9SCF-15 operational again Reply with quote

Everything went smoothly on the conversion. Now to find out what the problem is with the other box. The current system is barely making it. It's a P233 with 256 megs of RAM. The load average is at 1.75 constantly.

73 de Pat --- KA9SCF.
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ka9scf  



Joined: 17 Jun 2005
Posts: 34
Location: Lombard

PostPosted: Wed Feb 08, 2006 3:27 pm    Post subject: WB9WLS/KA9SCF radio problems Reply with quote

Looks like the radio is failing to lock for some posits. I'm going to lower the power to 5 watts until the radio can be replaced. If the problems continue, the digi may go off the air briefly on TX. The I-gate will be changed to 1-way if the TX is shut down.

73 de Pat --- KA9SCF.
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ka9scf  



Joined: 17 Jun 2005
Posts: 34
Location: Lombard

PostPosted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 10:40 pm    Post subject: Fully operational Reply with quote

The radio was replaced in January. There was an audio problem but that was fixed with some resistors on the audio circuit and cranking it. The audio is now a little lighter than the average packet station but it does receive a little better than before.

73 de Pat --- KA9SCF.
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ka9scf  



Joined: 17 Jun 2005
Posts: 34
Location: Lombard

PostPosted: Mon May 29, 2006 11:17 pm    Post subject: Audio crap again Reply with quote

Looks like the audio went bad during tonight's lightning storm. My dad will replace the 60k resistor soon. For now, some packets will be harder to decode on some systems (like my TH-D7A).

73 de Pat --- KA9SCF.
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ka9scf  



Joined: 17 Jun 2005
Posts: 34
Location: Lombard

PostPosted: Wed May 31, 2006 9:52 am    Post subject: KA9SCF-15 offline Reply with quote

I've disabled the digi until the audio problem is addressed. WB9WOZ-15 doesn't decode its packets anymore.

73 de Pat --- KA9SCF.
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ka9scf  



Joined: 17 Jun 2005
Posts: 34
Location: Lombard

PostPosted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 10:48 pm    Post subject: KA9SCF-15 operational again Reply with quote

I did this before putting the resistor on in January with no change but now it seems that a seperate ground run from the radio to the water pipe has done the trick this time.

73 de Pat --- KA9SCF.
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ka9scf  



Joined: 17 Jun 2005
Posts: 34
Location: Lombard

PostPosted: Mon Feb 23, 2009 11:58 am    Post subject: KA9SCF-15 back on the air. Reply with quote

There was a long period where the system was down due to other antenna uses. I've managed to get KA9SCF-15 on the air for the DCC and kept it on for the most part since. There is another planned antenna change but the pre-work hasn't been completed yet. I'm promoted the digi to new paradigm W2 status with WB9WOZ-15 off the air.

73 de Pat --- KA9SCF.
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KK9H  



Joined: 29 Jun 2004
Posts: 40
Location: Northfield, IL

PostPosted: Tue Feb 24, 2009 10:54 am    Post subject: KA9SCF-15 Reply with quote

I don't know what happened to WB9WOZ-15, but having your digi set to W2 and covering to the east as far as it can is a good thing.

73, Don KK9H
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ka9scf  



Joined: 17 Jun 2005
Posts: 34
Location: Lombard

PostPosted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 11:57 pm    Post subject: KA9SCF-15 moved to final antenna configuration. Reply with quote

Hi All,

I've changed the antenna setup on KA9SCF-15. Before it was using a commercial antenna at 80 feet with 200' of RG-214U. Now it's using an 17' long ham vertical side mounted at 60'. I've lowered the power to 10 watts as I don't have enough DC to power any more. The antenna is fed with 60' of LMR-400. There should be negligible difference in signal coverage other than the reduced power.

This setup will allow this system to run 24/7 without any long periods of down time. In the mean time, I'll run it W2 until WB9WOZ-15 is on the air again. Hopefully nothing serious happened with that station.

73 de Pat --- KA9SCF.
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