"Hybrid" repeater which features both FM and D-Sta

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Mong
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"Hybrid" repeater which features both FM and D-Sta

Post by Mong »

Sounds interesting....

I talked to one of the guys getting it on the air and he states it has good coverage in analog mode so far, I haven't asked how they got it to run analog and D-star at the same time.

Just what I need, an excuse to buy another radio :baby:

http://metro-uhf.org/repeaters/hoodroad/hood.html
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Post by ka8ypy »

Pass through repeater?? Not sure what he is doing with the Kenwood machine to make it D-STAR Hybrid???
Last edited by ka8ypy on Mon Apr 30, 2007 8:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Mong »

ka8ypy wrote:Pass through repeater, when he is done with it, you should also be able to use it for P25 as well.

I guess that's my excure for a UHF XTS5000 to match the VHF one the way :baby:

Thanks for the info, do you know of any others that have worked that way?
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Post by ka8ypy »

Mong wrote:
ka8ypy wrote:Pass through repeater, when he is done with it, you should also be able to use it for P25 as well.

I guess that's my excure for a UHF XTS5000 to match the VHF one the way :baby:

Thanks for the info, do you know of any others that have worked that way?
Two maxtracs back to back, check out this thread http://batboard.batlabs.com/viewtopic.php?t=45645 over at batlabs.

Has all the info you need to "roll your own".
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Post by Mong »

ka8ypy wrote:Pass through repeater?? Not sure what he is doing with the Kenwood machine to make it D-STAR Hybrid???

Ok, after they get it online I'll converse with them to see how they did it.
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Post by Mong »

ka8ypy wrote: Two maxtracs back to back, check out this thread http://batboard.batlabs.com/viewtopic.php?t=45645 over at batlabs.

Has all the info you need to "roll your own".

I remember reading that before, but was curious if that worked with the D-star stuff as well.
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Post by grinthock »

No reason why it wouldn't once you adjusted the deviation properly.

The question is... Will the settings optimized for IMBE / P25 also work to pass the D-STAR as well...
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Post by ka8ypy »

grinthock wrote:No reason why it wouldn't once you adjusted the deviation properly.

The question is... Will the settings optimized for IMBE / P25 also work to pass the D-STAR as well...
It should, D-Star is AMBE.
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Post by grinthock »

It's not that simple... I know very little about D-STAR, and how it's modulated and what the waveforms look like, how it deviates, how the receivers are tuned...

It's quite possible it won't work.
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Post by ka8ypy »

grinthock wrote:It's not that simple... I know very little about D-STAR, and how it's modulated and what the waveforms look like, how it deviates, how the receivers are tuned...

It's quite possible it won't work.
Deviation is the same for both IMBE and AMBE, so if it is set for one, it should in theory work for the other.

The voltage points are different between the two (I think, I have to go back to DVSI web site and read some more), hence one not working with the other directly.
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Post by tvsjr »

Nope, not so much.

DSTAR is a 4.8Kbps GMSK emission (2.4Kbps voice, 1.2Kbps FEC on voice only, 1.2Kbps SSD with no FEC). P25 is a 9.6Kbps 4-level FSK or QPSK-C emission.

If Wowbagger is monitoring, I'm sure he can go into way more detail.
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Post by mr.syntrx »

The vocoder is largely irrelevant to whether the repeater will repeat it, unless it actually contains vocoding capability. The modulation, frame formats, FEC etc are what you need to worry about, and between P25 CAI, these are incompatible.

Sometimes you can get close enough for it to not matter, e.g. a repeater designed to repeat FED-STD-1023 will happily repeat SECURENET, because the systems are so similar, but you won't get that in this case.
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Post by mr.syntrx »

mr.syntrx wrote:The vocoder is largely irrelevant to whether the repeater will repeat it, unless it actually contains vocoding capability. The modulation, frame formats, FEC etc are what you need to worry about, and between P25 CAI, these are incompatible.

Sometimes you can get close enough for it to not matter, e.g. a repeater designed to repeat FED-STD-1023 will happily repeat SECURENET, because the systems are so similar, but you won't get that in this case.
ugh. between P25 CAI and D-star
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Post by f4ddp »

Mong wrote:
ka8ypy wrote: Two maxtracs back to back, check out this thread http://batboard.batlabs.com/viewtopic.php?t=45645 over at batlabs.

Has all the info you need to "roll your own".

I remember reading that before, but was curious if that worked with the D-star stuff as well.
It works without any problems!

We have such a ham repeater here (RX Motorola GM900 / TX Motorola GM950). It works in analog, in P25 and D-Star.
Of course a true digital repeater would be better, but for the price of this setup it performs quite well.
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Post by Mong »

Ok, thanks. BTW, WTF is up with your picture on QRZ? :baby:
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Post by f4ddp »

Mong wrote:Ok, thanks. BTW, WTF is up with your picture on QRZ? :baby:
Well, I was playing fool on SSTV with another :ham: , and here is the result :)
That picture is quite old (done around 2002). I live in Poland now (Warsaw), my other call is SQ5AG and I've become a full-time Motosexual since that time :baby:

I have some P25 and D-Star equipment, so have a few of my friends. We decided to build a digital-capable repeater (Input: 431.300 / Output: 438.900). It allows us to do some side-by-side tests of these protocols (so far we discovered that P25 had a better error-correction system that D-Star).

Our current project is to build a D-Star VHF simplex - Analog UHF simplex patch, to allow D-Star users to discuss with those with analog equipment. A lot of fun in perspective! :mjban:
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Post by k4wtf »

f4ddp wrote:
It works without any problems!

We have such a ham repeater here (RX Motorola GM900 / TX Motorola GM950). It works in analog, in P25 and D-Star.
Of course a true digital repeater would be better, but for the price of this setup it performs quite well.
What do you do to keep out QRM/QRN? Just wondering. I'd like to put up an IMBE capable repeater here and this would be the only way I could pull together the funds to do it but, I don't want to put something on the air that I can't keep from keying from intermod or malicious signals.
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Post by motorola_otaku »

k4wtf wrote:
f4ddp wrote:
It works without any problems!

We have such a ham repeater here (RX Motorola GM900 / TX Motorola GM950). It works in analog, in P25 and D-Star.
Of course a true digital repeater would be better, but for the price of this setup it performs quite well.
What do you do to keep out QRM/QRN? Just wondering. I'd like to put up an IMBE capable repeater here and this would be the only way I could pull together the funds to do it but, I don't want to put something on the air that I can't keep from keying from intermod or malicious signals.
You don't, unfortunately. The passthrough repeater does just that - it passes anything it hears on through.

I had an idea to jerry-rig an IMBE COR circuit out of the BCi25 cards for the older BC780/235 scanners, but no one seems to have a schematic or pinout for the connector (with good reason, most likely. :baby: )
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Post by w4wtf »

Hmmm.

I saw a software NAC decoder somewhere, perhaps that could be used to open squelch with a valid NAC if it is fast enough.
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Post by motorola_otaku »

w4wtf wrote: I saw a software NAC decoder somewhere, perhaps that could be used to open squelch with a valid NAC if it is fast enough.
Yep, it's called "the kNACk." I haven't personally played with it, so YMMV.

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Post by k4wtf »

OK. So a nice clean RF environment is important here.

What is your experience with yours? Does it TX a lot on garbage or is it OK?
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Post by w4wtf »

On a similar note, has anyone connected two astro sabers in AVA's to make a repeater? I know tweaking the audio levels is very important,

I am thinking of trying 2 AS1's in AVA's using this software controller

http://www.synergenics.com/sc/
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Post by K8TEK »

Why do hammies feel the need to label their repeaters? Putting the callsign, input/output freqencies, and the pl on the front of the repeater is just gay. Nobody cares!

http://metro-uhf.org/repeaters/hoodroad ... th-PA.html
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Post by motorola_otaku »

K8TEK wrote:Why do hammies feel the need to label their repeaters? Putting the callsign, input/output freqencies, and the pl on the front of the repeater is just gay. Nobody cares!

http://metro-uhf.org/repeaters/hoodroad ... th-PA.html
I thought that was a requirement at the larger shared sites, so if someone was having an interference issue they'd know where everyone else was TXing at, as well as who to contact if an offender was located.
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Post by KC8RYW »

K8TEK wrote:Why do hammies feel the need to label their repeaters? Putting the callsign, input/output freqencies, and the pl on the front of the repeater is just gay. Nobody cares!

http://metro-uhf.org/repeaters/hoodroad ... th-PA.html
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Post by motorola_otaku »

k4wtf wrote:OK. So a nice clean RF environment is important here.

What is your experience with yours? Does it TX a lot on garbage or is it OK?
I haven't actually put one up. <_< We have an issue around here with broadband sweeping noise across the entire 430-450 range from what we're pretty sure is military radar, so I don't think one would fly too well (pun intended? ;p )

There's also the issue with re-clocking. A Quantar/Quantro reclocks its received signal so if there's any noise in it it's completely removed before retransmission. The passthrough repeater doesn't do that - it just repeats what it hears. So if you're marginal into it, you're still going to be marginal coming out of it.
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Post by Mong »

K8TEK wrote:Why do hammies feel the need to label their repeaters? Putting the callsign, input/output freqencies, and the pl on the front of the repeater is just gay. Nobody cares!

http://metro-uhf.org/repeaters/hoodroad ... th-PA.html

It's like whenever you talks, nobody cares :cheeseandwhine:


How many hams are putting up digital/900/1200/900 with 6meter RX? Some people bitch at the people who put up yet another 2 meter machine at 100ft, yet when someone actually does something different, you still bitch.

I'm not goan know th eguy who put a 900 machine 4 miles from my job, just have to see how to reprogram the work radios for it :baby:
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Post by mr.syntrx »

motorola_otaku wrote:
K8TEK wrote:Why do hammies feel the need to label their repeaters? Putting the callsign, input/output freqencies, and the pl on the front of the repeater is just gay. Nobody cares!

http://metro-uhf.org/repeaters/hoodroad ... th-PA.html
I thought that was a requirement at the larger shared sites, so if someone was having an interference issue they'd know where everyone else was TXing at, as well as who to contact if an offender was located.
Every site around here has that requirement. You'll see the ham repeaters labelled, as well as the police and commercial machines etc.
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Post by ka8ypy »

Of course you could just buy one of these and be done with it...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... &rd=1&rd=1

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Post by k4wtf »

Dude... You could donate the second one for the Southeast Hamsexy Infiltration Team. (We're the SHIT ya know!)

I've got a place for it at 250ft+ at the top of my office building. It should cover for all of us hamsexuals down in the upstate and since 3/4's of us are now P25 sexy, we need a P25 repeater!
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Post by Mong »

Put it higher, some of us towards Charlotte are digi-cool as well :baby:
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