DAREN of WV News February 3, 2013(.A74)
WA8LLM (304) 679-3470 wa8llm@yahoo.com WOOD COUNTY EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS P.O. BOX 3328, PARKERSBURG, WV 26103 http://www.wc8ec.org
DAREN News, are articles and information about the Digital Amateur Radio "Emergency" Network of WV, which operates on 145.69 MHz. Anyone having any information about DAREN, or Amateur Radio in general, and would like to share it with others, may send it to WA8LLM @ PKBGWV on 145.69 MHz, or to my E-Mail: wa8llm@yahoo.com. A State Wide DAREN NET is operated every Saturday from 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm, and lately, before and after those hours. The DAREN Net Announcement, showing the MAIN NCS, ALTERNATE NCS, NODEs accessible to both, and the previous week's check-ins, are posted by Thursday on most of the Main county DAREN PBBS'. The DAREN News can also be found on the wc8ec.org website.
The State Wide DAREN Net was low this week. I think the problem is the loss of so many NODEs on the system in the past few months. I get E-Mails from time- to-time from some of the regular users of the DAREN system, asking me to put them on the check-in list since they are unable to find a path to the weekly DAREN Net Control Station. A few years ago I thought about interfacing some of the 145.69 MHz NODEs to a 6 Meter frequency. Since 6 Meters would cover a larger area of the state, it could be a backbone frequency to get into areas that 2 Meters might not reach. The users of the 145.69 MHz would connect on 2 Meters which would automatically re-transmit on 6 Meters. The 2 Meter frequency (145.69 MHz) would be for local use and the 6 Meter frequency would have coverage over the whole state. If there were no 2 Meter paths in some parts of the state, such as we have now, a 6 Meter/2 Meter station could be installed that would allow local station have access to other parts of the state. I'm going to look for a 6 Meter frequency, and start to put together such a station and see how it works. Instead of using a cross channel TNC, the two transceivers would share one Terminal Node Controller (TNC). The audio coming from each transceiver would go into the TNC, and the audio from the TNC would go to both transceivers. If the system works like I hope, those who are the SYSOPs for some of the DAREN NODEs could do the same thing and we should be able to fill in the missing paths and have state wide coverage again. If anyone has an idea for a frequency, or other ideas with the system, let me know. I'll keep everyone posted on how the project is coming along.
I'm planning to make a trip this coming week to work on the Roane County NODE/PBBS of ROANWV/SPNCWV. It has been down about a month. We think the power supply for the system may be bad. There is an 800 MHz radio that is working on the same power supply and battery, and it is also off the air.
That's all I have for this week. If you have anything you want put in the News let me know.
There were 44 only check-ins to the State Wide DAREN Net this week.