ARCARS

December 2007

Meeting Minutes

Our group met on December 4, 2007 with 16 members and guests present.

Special Meeting: There was no official business transacted at this meeting. There were a lot of conversations about amateur radio applications and local operations.

We enjoyed a wonderful potluck dinner. It was a time to just get together, reflect, and begin to anticipate activities planned in the upcoming year.

NEWSLETTER: Mobile link (suitable for most mobile phones) at http://www.bandopening.com/arcars/mobile.wml . Our newsletter and web page is available at www.qsl.net/arcars and www.bandopening.com/arcars . We have a wealth of information available on the website including the RSS feed. If you have any information that you feel suitable for posting on the webpage, please contact N8EGJ for consideration.

CLUB PROJECT: Nothing discussed.

OLD BUSINESS: coming up in January, Edgar (KC8VLV) plans to do the weekly ARCARS net from the club station and will be using the club call. He stated that this will allow visitors to observe the process as well as to make it more convenient to retain the records of the contacts during the nets.

Andrew (KC8SPD) presented plans to obtain a 24’ cargo trailer that would be converted to hold emergency stations to be used during ARCARS deployment. The presentation was made at a Red Cross board meeting in an effort to inform board members of our service as an asset to the efforts of the Red Cross disaster team.

ANNOUNCEMENTS and other info:

The ARCARS & International Traders Net is held every Tuesday evening at 8pm on the 146.800 NA8I repeater.

The International Friendship Net is held every Thursday at 9pm on the 145.370-VA3SAR repeater

The Thumb / Mid Michigan Nets are held Monday through Saturday at 9:30pm on the 147.300 repeater.

HF: The Great Lakes Emergency and Traffic Net is held nightly at 8pm on 3.932 kHz

The AC8W DX Cluster on 144.970 MHz is available. Check it for HF activity.

Swap List provided by Frank, VE3FBH

Using Internet Radio Liking Project (IRLP) on the WD8DUV (146.72)
repeater



What is IRLP?  It's a way to connect two ham radios together via
the Internet.  It can be two repeaters, two home stations, or a
mixture.

When you transmit to an IRLP station, it digitizes your voice and
sends it over the Internet to another IRLP station (node) and
converts it back to audio.  There is a delay in the process, so
it's a good idea to press the PTT and wait a second before
talking so that your first words won't get lost.

To use IRLP on the WD8DUV repeater, just transmit with the 110.9
Hz PL that the repeater uses, identify with your call sign, press
your keypad with the four digit node number that you want to
connect, and release your PTT.  You should hear the greeting
recorded for that node.  When you transmit next, your audio will
be heard at the remote node.

Good etiquette is to listen for at least 15 seconds first in case
there is a conversation going on at that node.  If not, transmit
your call sign and city / state / country.  Allow a five second
pause before beginning each of your transmissions.

When you are done, you can disconnect from the remote node by
identifying, then using your keypad to transmit 7 3.  You will
hear the node sign off message.

To find a node number, you can go to < http://www.irlp.net/ > and
click on the Node Info tab.  There's lots more IRLP information
there too.  There are nodes all over the world.

There are also special nodes called "reflectors".  These are
computers that allow more than two nodes to talk with each other
at the same time.  An example is the Western reflector, 9250.

Don't rag chew on the local repeater while connected to the IRLP;
it will dominate their repeater with the constant conversation.

Go easy on the IRLP; if you are using it a couple of hours a day,
you may be wearing out your welcome and you may have future
connections blocked by the remote nodes.

You may notice that the audio on the repeater does not have bass
frequencies.  An IRLP requirement is to NOT transmit any PL
tones, courtesy beeps, hang time, or CW/voice ids.  We pick up
the receiver audio and use a filter that cuts off frequencies
below 250 Hz.  We add a new PL tone back in at the repeater
transmitter.

Many thanks to Glenn, WD8DUV, for adding this linking.

Mike - AA8K