The Echo-Link Station K5NNN-L, is now running on 146.52 MHz national calling frequency. It is located at my house, at 940ft M.S.L. The antenna is a 7.2 dbi gain antenna and sits on top of a 2 story house on a 20ft mast so it sit a about 1,000 feet about M.S.L. in Bexar County (San Antonio, TX). The location is near Vance Jackson, between Callaghan and Wurzbach Rd. For a more exact location, look up my callsign on QRZ.com. You can hook up thru you cell phone also, using the Android or iPhone applications…
This EchoLink is programmed not interrupt any stations and will allow better communications with hams traveling thru the San Antonio, Texas metro area, or hams traveling away from home who want to communicate back into San Antonio. There is a regular Monday night net on 146.52 by the Unusual Suspects ham group and this would enable members of that group to participate in the net, even if they aren’t physically within radio range of everybody else on the net.
The Station ID is set to go off at 7 minutes after the hour and only takes less than a second. If it detects the frequency is busy, it waits until a gap before announcing. When a ham connects via EchoLink from their computer or cellphone, it will announce the ham’s call sign who is connected, once when they are first connected. After that, it’s up to the ham to properly identify their own call sign. It’s output is a little over 150 watts. This EchoLink station can hear very well and reaches out to between 30 and 50 miles from this location, depending upon terrain.
Martin N5SWU can also control Echo-link remote from his house… And has done all of the work making this possible… Thank you Martin for all the help.
Please give it a try..
More info on EchoLink can be found online at http://www.EchoLink.org. The station is programmed to allow mobile users (or base station users) to connect to specific nodes of other EchoLink stations via the keypad, but you must know what that station’s node number is before you can do that.
Please let me know if I can help with any questions. I’ll be listening for you! You can also contact me via my email address listed below.
Andrew K5NNN
watsoninvestigation@justice.com
April 10th, 2014 at 7:02 PM
Posted on behalf of N5XO
First thing I wish to do Andrew, is thank you for your efforts to provide additional accessibility to our weekly net held every monday evening at 7:pm on 146.520 called Talk 52. Myself and the rest of the Unusual Suspects wish to thank you for the hard work and efforts towards this goal.
How ever we wish to point out that while we appreciate your efforts to provide this new accessibility to the day to day conversations as well as our weekly net Talk 52, we feel that it runs counter to our basic philosophy and tenants of Simplex Operation.
The purpose of our weekly net and the Simplex Operation is to show other hams what is possible via simplex operation and to encourage people to build quality simplex stations as well as encourage people to operate simplex. Echo link node runs counter to that desire and style of operating. As such the majority of the group would appreciate it being moved off of the 146.520 frequency and back over to 146.420 were it is logged and people are expecting it.
I also wish to take exception to the statement that it does not interfere with any conversations and I know you have explained how it will not walk on top of a station unless it is real weak.
Well as you are aware having operated simplex yourself in the past, distant stations, 2 meter DX as well as some mobil will be weak to your station and the Echo Link has ID’d many times over existing conversations. Not only has it walked over distant 2 meter Simplex stations out side of this region and interfered with the conversations in progress to those DX stations, but it has walked over multiple local conversations that your station should have been hearing very well.
This by it’s very nature is disruptive interference and as such a violation of FCC rules and regulations and needs to be corrected.
Along with the ID problem, as people connect in and out of your node, it gives that persons ID logging on and logging out again walking over existing local and DX conversations.
This situation has happened over 1 dozen times in the past week.
So while myself personally and the Unusual Suspects appreciate your efforts at expanding the operational capability of 146.520 we would respectfully request that you please move the system to another frequency that it is less likely to cause harmful interference with.
Thank you
Greg N5XO
http://www.wx5us.us