SDR Technology Has Arrived At Sm0kenet!

Well I have my first SDR P-25 Trunking/Scanning set up now.

I will have to build up the PC hardware, which I have plenty of.

Here at work, the test set up for the SDR radio worked as advertised so I have no 

doubt the rest of the project will work as written. It has a nice water fall display.

I bought 2 of these since that is what the trunking app said to do, one for the control channel

 & one for the traffic channel. Hopefully I can have a P-25 digital radio set up for under 100 Bucks!

More as the project develops.


All for now, Comments Invited

SmØke

"New" Controller for 927.5875 - well not new, but recycled from a older BYRG repeater project!

Well we now have a S-Comm 7K controller for 927.5875.

I picked it up late Saturday night from Lucky (WØDRJ), he had pulled this gem from a old repeater project I scrapped out a few years ago when my former employer (CRC) moved out to Lenexa when the Cave at 31st & Mercier got vacated.

I am glad Lucky salvaged this controller, otherwise the scrapper would have had it!
I will have to fire this up and see if the "Dallas Clock Chip" needs replacing.
It even has cabling installed and is basicly ready for interfacing to the Quantar repeater.

927.5875 Repeater Foxridge Site ( Mission, KS) in Blue Cabinet

So now we don't have to purchase a new controller , we may just have to get a new clock chip,
but we will see when we fire it up on the bench.

All for now,

SmØke

A Re-Purposed 2u Rack Chassis from Kyle - KØKN

From another BYRG'er Kyle - KKNØ

He writes:

I saved this thing from the dumpster a few days ago. It used to be a Lucent DMXtend, and was probably 10k or more new!

The chassis itself is not much different from what the repeater radios are mounted in at the Merriam site. It's a 2 RU rack mount chassis.

I had to drill out about 2 dozen rivets, but I think that the result is worth it! Note that it already has 3 dual-speed fans installed, a terminal strip in the back, and plenty of holes for cable entry.

I put a couple of Motos in it just for a mock-up. I may end up moving nodes 2211 and 2212 into this unit, or perhaps save it for another use at Merriam or elsewhere.

Anyhow, free is free! hi hi

73 Kyle, KØKN

_______________________________________________________________________________

Chris Replies:

Chris K7AZ

Nice looking and functional rack mount box!

Don’t forget the Poly-Phaser surge protectors  :)

Chris

____________________________________________________________________

All in all, I think it was a good re-purposing use of the chassis.

Good job Kyle!  BTW if you guys need a used 1U or 2 U rack plate I have some used ones

here at "The Facility" our shop here on Troost. We have blemished units that we recycle and if you need one or two.  I Will post some pics here later

73 for now

SmØke

Spring Cleaning Tune Up Day 2013 

Part II

We had some success and some failures on the rounds today. The Downtown site

we got rid of the nasty ground loop that had been bothering the system for a long while.

Basically what was done is we added a 600 ohm 1 to 1 transformer between the radio interface and the Linux controller and fixed the signal ground that was lacking. Also we gave the cooling fans their own power supply as well which helped in the motor noise issue.

The fan noise was masking the ground hum issue which was found after we moved the fan power supply source. so we had in reality 2 issues.

Here is a few pictures of the downtown site.

442.5500 Repeater & Linux Controller

Our Antenna Farm

2 of Our Fine Feathered Falcon Friends Nesting.

Our 927.1125 Repeater and the WB0KIA Central 224.100 Mhz Receiver Rack.  

The 900 Mhz repeater has a transmitter problem, so we will have revisit this on another day.

The 224.10 Central Receiver checked out and was working fine.

Next we had brunch at a local Denny's ( thanks Chuck! ) & then went out to the east side of 

Kansas City to our Booth Tower site. to repair some issues we had out there.

The 224.20 Repeater was restored to operational status after the feed line was damaged due to vandals this past fall. We also rebooted the LiveATC.net audio feed server so we could hear the KCI airport planes again.  As it had shut down after the storms the other night. Found out that the UPS battery has crapped out , so UPS batteries are on order now.

More to come..... All for now comments are invited. 

DrSmØke - WØNQX

Spring Cleaning & Tune Up Day - 2013

Sorry I have not posted here in a long while.

Some of the BYRG tech crew will have a work day on Thursday, April 11, 2013.

We hope to make several site visits to have "Spring Cleaning & Tune Up" on some of the BYRG
network sites. Such as the one shown below.

WBØYRG  442.550 Repeater Downtown Kansas City Mo

Also we will attempt to gain access to the site where a CERT repeater has a power supply
issue and get it going for another sister organization. We try and help out where and when we can.

WØLHK 442.150 Repeater in Overland Park, KS

You see the BYRG tech crew works on all kinds of things for us and other ham clubs.
We share our technical staff since some clubs & organizations don't always have the technical expertise or test equipment that we have, so we share our vast knowledge of this stuff in hoping we can get some younger fellows involved & interested in doing what we have done for the last 30 or so years.

Here is a few pictures of some of our repeater sites and gear that we have worked on over the years..

A D-Star repeater stack Dayton Hamvention.

A D-Star repeater stack Dayton Hamvention.

Yea, we do all kinds of repeaters and modes.
Analog, Digital, VHF, UHF, Microwave you name it we have probably done it!

The above tower was at the Dayton Hamvention for several years in a row. Yes, our group set that monster

up and had it hooked up to the iCom Main Display Booth inside the Hamvention Arena so folks could try out the latest Icom HF gear..  

Kansas City ATV Group Repeater Receive Antenna 

Yours truly at the Kansas City ATV Group Repeater Receive Antenna 300+ ft up AGL

All for now I will post some more pictures later.... :)

BYRG Summer Project

 ( click here BYRG Summer Project   to see more pictures)

An upgrade for the 442.550 repeater down town.

 

We have our donated rocks, Tnx to Bryce of Commenco
I tested all the rocks . 

All the RX ones work.

Could not see any activity on the TX ones,
 

But I did not try very hard as the mosquito's were thinking I 

was a large course meal!

They may have just needed tweaking to bring about some RF indication.

All for now comments invited

Sm0ke

May 5, 2012 - K0GQ RPT

K0GQ RPT - Antenna work