IRLP on the AMRAD Repeater

[Frank Gentges]

Maitland came over today with the IRLP box in tow.  We installed it in 
my rack cabinet and proceeded to work out all the interface connections.

Prior to his arrival, I put up a dedicated Cushcraft Ringo antenna that 
came from Mark Kanawate's left overs he donated to the group.    I tuned 
the antenna to a 1.06 SWR using Terry's MiniVNA box.  A thanks to Terry 
and Mark.  If anyone is interested, Terry left the MiniVNA with me so 
see if someone would like to buy it.  I can testify that it works really 
well.

We have a Midland radio that Mike fixed up to interface to the box. 
After a tweak or two it looks like it will work out.  We are a bit short 
on audio but we know how to fix that.  A bit tip of the AMRAD hat to 
Mike as well as to Tom Azlin, both of which came up with a suitable radio.

Of course, a big tip of our collective hats to Maitland as he brought 
over a well set up node computer and helped get the radio and my FiOS 
high speed Internet interfaced to the node.  It seems there are always 
something nasty to deal with on these things and today was no exception.

Oh, yes, Rob Seastrom contributed the computer carcass to Maitland for 
the IRLP, so we must thank Rob.

Give us a few days to smooth out the rough spots and we should have it 
all up and working.  I hope to have some regular nets that will include 
Terry Fox through the IRLP.

We are meeting on Wednesday nights to study the use of Verilog with the 
Charleston receiver.  This should be a good chance to use the repeater 
as we work out its best use for this.

Today was a real group effort with it all coming together. ;-)

Frank K0BRA