As of September 8/08, the 444.450+ P25 repeater has moved to the GTA located in the Allen rd & Eglington area at a height of about 300 feet above ground level, previously at the Goodwood site.
Will post pics at some point as it was dark when we went up there to install it.
Thanks to Jordan JZZ for the muscle to get everything up there!
444.450+ offset 103.5 PL NAC 293 Astro P25
Milton site visit September 7/08
Duane VE3NHP is on it!
As of January 21st 2009, we have added a third receive site on the Toronto repeater 444.475, located at highway 401 & 404, connected to the voter at Ballantrae, giving us better portable coverage in the central part of the GTA.
We are now looking for a fourth RX site in the east end of the GTA to give us more omni handheld coverage off the downtown repeater.
As of December 28th, we have changed out the previous IRLP computer with a newer, faster one for IRLP and other voice over IP protocalls, such as Asterisk, which is a private VOIP format that we intend to use for linking repeaters through the internet, instead of RF.
Thanks to Ramesh, VA3 UV for setting up the box with IRLP software and all the other goodies we need to make this work.
We hope to have the VHF repeater in Huntsville connected to the hub in Ballantrae sometime this spring, or early summer, depending on how much time away we can get from the XYL!
Future plans include linking two other VHF repeaters, one of which already exists on 146.700 south of Sudbury, and the other located in the South River area, south of North Bay.
January 31st visit to Toronto, VE3 URU under construction during installation of hi stab oscillator. Thanks to Duane VE3 NHP for modding the Purc HSO to the MSF 5000.
Guys, I think we need another service monitor!
Duane VE3 NHP and Andrew VE3 GTU taking a break.
We added the Allstar link network on February 11th to the IRLP computer at Ballantrae, this enables us to have our own voice over IP link system aside from IRLP. We intend to use this to connect the Huntsville VHF repeater to the GTA system sometime this spring, and possibly to future repeaters in northern ontario.
Thanks to Ramesh VA3 UV for building the USB interface and configuring the computer at Ballantrae for IRLP and Asterix, and all the other wizardy stuff he does to maintain our VOIP part of the system!
Cheers!
Those of you that use the VE3URU repeater system regularly may have heard some interesting experiments taking place on the repeater lately. This is the ‘URU IS’ department at work. We have recently upgraded the IRLP PC at the Ballantrae site. The new PC, in addition to provisioning IRLP as before, also provisions Asterisk / Allstar linking.
Asterisk is an open source PBX; it is an extremely powerful ‘Private Branch Exchange’ telephone system. We are able to leverage many of its inherent capabilities such as ‘inter branch’ dialing, conferencing, etc. Allstar is an amateur radio linking system designed to link multiple repeater sites together using the Asterisk platform. Unlike IRLP, Allstar allows for long-term linking of multiple sites using a private tunnel over the public Internet. This presents many opportunities to a system such as URU as it allows for multiple sites to be connected together using the Internet rather than relying on point-to-point RF connections, which require link radio’s, antenna’s, tower space, and also consume a port on the repeater controller. Hence by using a three-port repeater controller, you can see that there is a limitation in the number of links a traditional controller can support.
In addition to the above, Asterisk / Allstar also offers other capabilities, such as D Star. Again some of you may have heard some of the D Star experiments taking place. We have setup an open D Star reflector to allow D Star repeater systems and DV Dongle users to connect into the system. As you are probably aware, D Star is a digital system, we are able to take the Digital packet stream and convert that into analog audio. The analog audio is then fed into an Asterisk node, which is then linked into URU. We are continuing to refine the audio quality from D Star, please feel free to participate in any of the experiments and let us know your thoughts on audio quality, etc.
We will soon be building an Asterisk / Allstar node for the Huntsville site, which when complete, will enable us to link in the Huntsville site into the Ballantrae site. The Asterisk / Allstar system is a scalable solution, which will allow expansion and rollout to multiple remote sites.
One of the other experiments in the ‘feasibility assessment’ stage is a D Star hot spot. This will allow D Star users to access the system using their D Star radios. While there is software available to allow D Star users to access the proprietary (or closed) D Plus network, we are assessing the feasibility of either modifying the existing code or developing new code to allow the D Star hot spot to connect to our Open D Star reflector, from which we have now been able to successfully decode digital data into an analog stream over Asterisk.
We are also experimenting with dual transmitters on the Toronto 444.475 repeater, also known as simulcast. This involves adding another transmitter at the Milton site and having them both transmit at the same time, however, not an easy feat! To do this you need really stable transmitters and audio levels adjusted perfectly. We have added hi stability oscillators at both sites but still need to make a few changes, one of which will be turning off the transmit 103.5 hz PL or CTCSS tone, and operating both transmitters as carrier squelch, no tone.
This will help us determine whether the system will work or not, we are pretty confident it will, giving us a very large coverage area from the Kitchener/Waterloo area to east of Toronto and possibly further with a third simulcast site in the future.
If we succeed running the Toronto repeaters in carrier mode, we will try to impliment PL or CTCSS after the fact, first thing is to get it working in carrier mode.
Lots of interesting projects in the works.
Stay tuned and feel free to participate!
On April 18 2009 we turned the Toronto transmitter back on after replacing the repeater control board, we are now running simulcast on 444.475+ 103.5 PL between Toronto and Milton.
Both transmitters are running carrier squelch mode, no TX PL, this means you will have to run your radio with 103.5 tone in transmit only to open up the URU receivers. If you run both transmit and receive tone you won't be able to hear the downtown repeater.
You will find that with both transmitters running at the same time, in some areas of overlapping signal from both sites, the repeater may sound distorted, but the distortion will minimize as you move into the favouring sites coverage area.
We plan to install GPS oscillators at each site, giving each transmitter a reference which will be identical, hence allowing both transmitters to be exactly on frequency with each other.
The simulcast setup is still in testing mode but plans are to improve it adding PL to each transmitter at some point, and possibly another simulcast site? You never know!
Stay tuned for the next phase!
Cheers.
On September 28 2009, the South River VHF repeater went on the air on 146.970 mhz with negative offset and 100.0 hz PL tone.
The repeater is located just west of South River and is linked to the Ballantrae hub via Asterisk.
The antenna is about 200 feet above ground level pointed north to cover from Sundridge to North Bay and Sudbury.
We have ordered two more PC's for Asterisk linking of the Huntsville and Alban repeaters.
Huntsville will be next to come online before winter hits and if we have time before the snow flies, Alban will come online as well.
Enjoy!
Chris VE3 BNI
On October 10 2009 we installed the Asterisk box at the Huntsville site, which will link it to Ballantrae and other repeaters connected to the system.
After a few teething issues, we have it linked to Ballantrae and the rest of the system.
Also have replaced the repeater at Alban with a 25 watt MSF 5000 and Asterisk link to the rest of the system.
Having the three VHF repeaters in northern Ontario and three UHF repeaters in southern Ontario, we offer continuous mobile coverage from Kitchener Waterloo to Toronto, north to espanola and North Bay.
