In order to provide high capacity, easy to use volunteer emergency communications services, we have built with our own funds (and some grant money of late) and are now making available for general Amateur use the second phase of our new D-Star 90+ kilobit data network.  This technology, which supports web based emergency computer applications, moves Amateur Radio back to where the FCC Part 97 rules say we belong- advancing the state of the radio art. 

Our organization is dedicated to improving emergency communications and helping agencies and volunteer groups around the world be the best they can be using start of the art technology and dedicated, experienced volunteers from the Amateur Radio Service. 

D-Star Amateur Radio Repeater List Twin Cities Metro 3/15/09

1. KC0TQI  East Ramsey County, 250' AGL 1.2 DD   1299.000 - MNSTP - Sponsored by Twinslan/Mining ARC etc   - 172.16.0.20/24 is the web/Citadel server- DV 1285.100-    (DHCP)

2. WD0HWT Minneapolis South/MSP Airport/MOA  - 200'AGL - - 1298.000   DD only 172.16.1.1 is the repeater, 172.16.1.20 is the Citadel server (255.255.255.0)     *Note this system is not owned or financially supported by the MARA.  (+ DHCP)

3. KE8TX 1251.000 DD 172.16.2.1 Minneapolis Downtown East - 400' AGL - Excellent range so far - thanks Roger and Peter and folks from HC Mobile Corps + Dan Skripka and Doug Reed+ Max - web server on .20 (Mask 255.255.255.0) Emergency power + DHCP.   Citadel on .20

4. 1299.300 DD WB0ZKB3-  Minneapolis Downtown NE - Sponsored by Greg K and Alan + DV which we tested 6/22/08 - DHCP

5. 12??.?? DD Portable repeater owned by Alan

6. 12??.?? DD Portable repeater owned by Alan/Greg

7. NY9D 1249.000 New DD/packet Gateway STPONE - Downtown St. Paul #1 Site - *UP* 9/19/08  172.16.4.1 and 172.16.4.20 (255.255.255.0) + DHCP Packet on 145.01.  Citadel users on packet can leave messages for D-Star users and visa versa.   Max is about to deploy a packet command line interface for D-Star ID1 users.  

8. K0FVF West Metro (note  one is pretty active on 440 voice- several new users were added this weekend).   *Net now Sundays 9PM local time...use CQCQCQ in your radio for "your" call and K0FVF for Rptr1
145.150 K0FVF
442.900  K0FVF- DV
Sponsored by Greg Kitchak N0GEF

9. U of M- Moos Tower Minneapolis

443.425 +  W0YC   DV  -Run by the Gopher ARC.  Has a Gateway.   Reported to be having some 440 input issues. 

10. Anoka Radio Club

2M, 440, DD, DV

Reported to be on the air in test mode- waiting for an antenna.

The above screen shots were captured "live off the air" from the Linux appliance servers located on the Ethernet port on each Icom D-Star repeater.  They supply mail, conferencing and DNAT uplink services.  On our systems, this allows more than one ID-1 to have a data session more than one ID-1 at the same time.  This is not possible with just the stock repeater controller.   Trivnetdb is our flat file database that supports packet and D-Star/web, and was written as a Linux replacement for ARES Data. 

All services on the repeater server are in the 172.16.x.1-19 address space.

All client ID-1 users get an address (via DHCP) in the 172.16.x.21-127 address space.

The repeater server itself is at 172.16.x.20

All external servers are linked on the main web page to a 192.168.y.z

address. (Server ID-1s get these addresses).  

So a user at say, 172.16.0.21 clicks on the Trivnet link on the

main web page and the request is rerouted out the repeater to the remote

Trivnet box. In this case the remote server box has a 192 address.  

DNAT in the Linux Appliance translates the 172 to 192 addresses/ports both ways.  

Each ID-1 thinks it is talking to a host in Class C address block it has been assigned on the the Ethernet behind the repeater. 

Clicking on the Citadel link just connects them to webcit running on the

local server. All other web pages (mostly stats and logs and a couple of

help/info pages) are served up by "boa" running on the server.

Thanks Max and Kelly. 

Minnesota D-Star Emergency Data Network News

News:  6/30/09 -Wayne Green, who ran the the magazine "73 Amateur Radio Today" used to publish an annual report card on the American Radio Relay League, the National Amateur Radio organization.  We have talked to Wayne about carrying on some of his traditions and ideas- he said we should strike out on our own.  This one we are going to revive.

2008 ARRL Report Card

FCC - A

Mr. Hollingsworth was fabulous and things seem to be off to a good start under the new leadership

Historical Preservation - A

Every past word and deed has been lovingly captured in print, and from the looks of our basements, so has every piece of equipment ever used as well.

Technology - F

There is not a word in the FCC Part 97 rules encouraging the use of legacy operating modes- they are permitted, but right in the preamble it says we are supposed to "advance the state of the radio art" - this problem, if not fixed, is very serious.

Emergency Communications - D

We are not in the National Disaster Plan - why not?   Are we getting in the game enough on ICS/NIMS?  Is there a role for legacy technology in modern EmComm?  Are we regularly impressing served agencies with our advanced capabilities as we are supposed to do? 

Youth - D

Lots of effort here, but how cool is 30-50 year old radio technology really?

Member Services - A

Given limited resources, could some energy be redirected to other areas?

Public Relations - D

The unaided awareness of the concept of Amateur Radio is falling in the general population. 

News: 6/22/09: We are getting ramped up for the 2009 Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon.  Our team had a meeting today and started in on our project list:

1. We have a new version of our trivnetdb database for down /injured runner tracking - 3.0.  Peter is making some adjustments and we will test it next meeting and also clone it off onto a thin client for demo and training purposes.

2. We need a lead data operator for Net 2.  Kelly is moving to the Finish Line.

3. We need to work on repeater linking- one more try with the Ricochet equipment.  If that does not work we are moving up to Canopy equipment.

4. There is some interest by our Medical team in remote, tower mounted  video cameras to track and locate down runners at the finish line and in the last mile or so.  These are used extensively at the Marine Corps Marathon. 

5. We are working on plan to better integrate personal health records supplied by runners with the medical records in the Medical Tent. The idea is if we see a runner in the tent, we are able to print out the medical record form pre-populated with any available history information. 

6. We are looking for a mobile command center to use for Net 1 - the Hennepin County part of the race. 

News: 5/17/09: We had a chance to speak at the D-Star User's Group in Dayton.  The talk is available (very similar to the one from the DCC/TAPR show this summer) from Amateur Radio Video News www.arvideonews.com

The show was well attended.  There is a lot of interest in the repeater linking feature of D-Star.  More than 420 gateways exist world wide, and there are in excess of 8000 registered gateway users not including Japan, who are running on an older version of the gateway.  We shared a booth with Ed Woodrick WA4YIH from Georgia D-Star Inc.  They have an excellent newsletter. 

http://www.dstarinfo.com/

We talked to the Wisconsin folks, KB9MMA in particular.  We were wondering what happened to the big statewide packet network they had.  It has all moved to RMS, which is a Linux variant of the Winlink2000 program supported by the ARRL  They are still on 145.61.  We have an idea to link our two statewide systems together.

http://www.winlink.org/SysopSoftware

Several areas are deploying large scale high speed data systems, similar to ours.  These area include New Jersey and Houston.  We are going to release our DNAT and other code in an easy to use distribution soon.  We have not wanted to get into the Linux support business. 

News: 5/10/09: We are in the process of establishing friendly relations with yet another State Agency who owns some water towers.  These, as we have written before, are excellent sites for packet nodes, D-Star equipment,  voice repeaters, etc.  We are practicing our "elevator pitch" - a short, pithy mission statement of why we need to put our equipment on their sites.  I think listing the agencies you are supporting and the services you provide (we are a backup for the Pandemic Flu response as an example) is very good.  You need to provide names of references, and the heads of State Agencies are a good start.  You need to be a team player in a larger effort here. 

We own a commercial tower site and were approached by some nice and responsible railroad scanning enthusiasts.  They said they were hobbyists, and wanted tower space for free.  I was completely unmoved and all I could think of were the words "rent" and "insurance."  Just saying you are ham radio operators is no longer enough.   

News: 5/9/09.  Max had completed our demo for Dayton.  He has built web forms you can fill out for essentially all of the ICS templates.  These are picked up and mailed via Citadel behind our D-Star repeaters from Outlook Express (r) on the workstations in the emergency scene.      

News: 5/1/09: It is looking like this strain of H1N1 is "looking like a normal seasonal flu" in the words of one Public Health MD on the radio today.  We need to pat our Public Health Planners on the back here for a good solid response, do a bit of fine tuning of procedures and get ready for the next one, or the next version of this virus.  I think we do not need to go out and borrow more money and increase government funding here, as the next new strain will be as this one is -random and unpredictable, and spending more money now won't change that fact.  We actually need to fund pandemic response a few years from now, when the current stockpile of equipment and medications gets out of date.  

News: 4/26/09: Swine Influenza A (H1N1) has been identified in several US states by the CDC, and there was discussion of the SNS antiviral supply on a press conference today.  

News: 4/24/09: There is a novel type of swine flu in Mexico, that appears to be transmitted between humans. 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30389150/

News: 4/24/09: We may be expanding into Washington County on an excellent site.  We would add a new repeater stack there, to extend the high speed data coverage to the border with Wisconsin, and also provide East Metro digital voice coverage on 440, and possibly use the site as a hub for a more reliable Twin Cities-Rochester link on packet.  This will require fund raising, as we have a repair reserve only in the bank. 

We have located a water tank in Moorhead for a 145.67 packet node near the State University that would be good also for a temporary 800 MHZ antenna site for visiting mutual aid units in the area.  This was a big issue during the recent floods.  The idea is if a Comm Van from the Twin Cites came up they could "plug in" to a tall water tank antenna for better range.  For some reason, the million dollar emergency communications vans that are being ordered by counties here do not have decent (i.e. tall) antenna masts. 

News: 4/16/09: We are presenting "D-Star and Real World MCI" at the Dayton Hamvention D-Star Forum Friday night, and will be in the Icom booth Friday. 

News: 4/11/09: If you are using Windows Vista (r) or Windows 7 and need an async terminal program, the Airmail (from www.winlink.org) package has one that works great.  Thanks KE6RK. 

News: 4/9/09: We have been invited to staff the Icom booth in Dayton and to work on a program for the D-Star night Friday down there in Dayton

News: 4/5/09: We had four stations on the Sunday D-Star net- 9:00 PM on the K0FVF machine- 442.900.  The next D-Star User's Group is at 11:00 AM Saturday May 2 at Radio City in Mounds View. 

News: 4/5/09: We've changed our minds about D-Star DV mode.  Using the CQCQCQ "your" call, it is about the same amount of work to look up a repeater call sign and enter it in the RPTR memory as it is to put in a PL tone.  So the "extra effort" argument is gone.  Our experience lately with the mode has been very positive.  So we are raising funds to add the 440 modules to more of our site.  We got a new (to us) IC-91A this weekend at Radio City, and added in the DV module.  It works fine. 

News: 3/29/09: Paul, K0LAV our Network Engineering Director is suggesting we put in packet nodes in Staples and Detroit Lakes in order to get our backbone extended to Moorhead.  We are working on the Staples location now.  Packet equipment and an antenna was installed at a hospital in Staples by Jack, W0MBD. 

News: 3/28/09: K0LAV reported four check-ins to the D-Star 440 voice net a week ago Sunday. 

News: 3/24/09: We are calling in our markers to try to get a packet node installed up in the Red River area- the primary users would be the Red Cross, MN DEM and MN Department of Health.  We need a site for a small node cabinet and antenna at 80 feet or more.  We have a few pre staged node packages ready.

News: 3/23/09: There are reports of flooding in the Red River area.  It might be time to push some more links up that way via packet that can be built out to higher speeds later.

News: 3/22/09: Max is reporting progress on putting an ICS 213 message form in Citadel.  He is working on the rest of the ICS forms.  The ARRL Radiogram is important for historical reasons but that is about it, by a reading of FCC Part 97. 

News: 3/12/09: Paul, K0LAV has joined the ranks of 440 D- Star voice users tonight.  We also discovered that my little IC-U82 was not reaching the repeater over in Golden Valley from indoors so I had a high priced scanner.  If you are having D-Star issues, the first place to check is your RF connection and paths.   We again need to get a 440 machine in Ramsey County. 

News: 3/12/09:

After the TwinsLAN meeting is the next

Packet & Radio Workshop Saturday, March 14, 2009 at Noon to 5pm:

1710 N Douglas Dr, Suite 285

Golden Valley, MN 55422

Call on 146.520 for entry.

We will be working on D-STAR, linking, IP telephones, and project planning for the year. May even get some packet work done....

I'm be bringing an RF analyzer and sig gen to this work party in case you have a packet station to test. There will be plenty of other stuff to work on.....

If you are planning to bring a project and may need tools or equipment, send me an email Friday or early Saturday and I'll see what I can do.....

My favorite route to get to the location is Hwy 100 to the Duluth St exit. West on Duluth till it ends at Douglas Dr in front of Honeywell.

South on Douglas a little more than a block. Enter the parking lot using the last driveway on the east side before you hit the railroad tracks.

The entrance door is usually locked and we are half the building away, so plan to give a call on 146.520 when you arrive.

Doug. (N0NAS)

News: 3/10/2009: The next Hamfest in MN is 3/28/09

News: 3/10/2009: The next ARRL/TAPR Digital Communications Conference is in Chicago 9/25-2/09 again.  We have to see if we have some updates to write about

http://www.tapr.org/dcc.html

News: 2/22/09: Our talk on the Minnesota Packet/D-Star network & strategy from the 2008 Chicago TAPR Conference is commercially available on DVD

 http://arvideonews.com/dcc2008/index.html

News: 2/21/2009: Our work session list is growing.  One is in the making soon.  (3/22?)

Build a full time D-Star application gateway to "Safe and Sound" for the Red Cross

Test IP Phone system #1

Test IP Phone system #2 (PBX in a Flash 1.3)

Build a hard disk based Linux appliance running our database + Internet /Intranet gateway -uplink for home /served agency use.  These can have a disk drive vs. flash as you can get to them easily for repairs.  A 17 watt 110V AC appliance is a lot more electric bill friendly than a 65-150 watt desktop computer. 

There are reports from K0LAV who is our Site Engineering Consultant of a linking microwave system being available for $200/end.  The idea is to link Minneapolis South, STPONE and Mining.  One idea is to set up a microwave relay site at the MNMPLS rooftop packet site @300 feet.  The Minneapolis East site would be standalone, as it has a main job of supporting County /State mobile command centers and the Red Cross. 

We need to investigate a new patient care/PHR/bed tracking system for the hospital tent.  This needs to be standalone and HIPAA aware.  It would then feed person location information to the non secure Amateur Radio system.  The Doctors want to have a runner wheeled into the admissions area, have their runner bib barcode scanned and be able to hand back  a sheet of paper with the medical record form pre-populated with personal health record data.   Ideally this would be available on a handheld wireless computer.  This is how the US DoD does battlefield triage. 

Somebody needs to start documenting our operations plans and frequencies in IC 205 format.  John Dooley (MN EOC) gets credit for a way forward here- we were wrapped around the axle on needing forty pages of stuff in a binder but the forms are pretty simple/one page. 

There is a patch or two needed for the 2008 Production Linux/Sun System on the packet side

Need to test live streaming video ("on scene assessment" per one of our agencies) on one of our repeaters.  This *should* work.

Need to test multiple laptops on a switch/hub behind a single ID-1 to a repeater- we do this all day long on 802.11

Test the barcode scanner for patient admissions.

Need to record our systems as "repeaters" with the Minnesota Repeater Council.  Each has a 1.2 DV module.  We can record those to get "in the book"

News: 2/20/09: John Leeper, who is our expert on computer equipment that is otherwise headed to the recycling plant, has hinted we may see a dozen "new to us" laptops.  Our old fleet is severely dragging.  The 146.85 MARA repeater, clearly the crown jewel of Minnesota amateur radio assets, reportedly has no UPS on it right now.  John located a pair of late model, modular UPS systems we should deploy there.  Our best gear needs to be used on our key systems.   

News 2/19/09: We applaud the developers of the new Twin Cities APCO-25 ARMER interoperable public safety radio system.  It worked well during the RNC and 35W bridge collapse.  We are going to disagree professionally with some advice we are getting though from system backers.  There is interest in creating radio caches and handing out the radios to various support and volunteer groups.  In a real emergency, especially a large disaster, this is incorrect practice.  The big trunked systems have a finite number (16, 24, 32 etc) of *shared* radio channels and backbone channels.  If you have an all hands on deck situation, with every police and fire and public works unit out rescuing people, you may have all the channels tied up with that.  Adding a few hundred volunteers will tie up channel/trunk capacity that could be used to save lives.  We use about 3-4 full time Amateur radio channels at the Marathon, with only 120 radio operators and highly experienced control operators on directed nets.   The Marathon also uses five shared/rented commercial UHF repeaters for race operations, and have had trouble with channel capacity on those, (even on a Sunday morning) which has interfered with transportation and logistics work.  The symptom of a full shared repeater is the blocking of transmissions. 

Ad-hoc volunteer activities need to be directed to Amateur Radio, as we have 40 "channels" of UHF/VHF repeaters (and simplex) in the Twin Cities alone.   We are all in favor of training, but the notion of big trunked radio systems and "surge capacity" needs to be looked at from an engineering perspective.

News: 2/18/09: We had a chance to present the system and see a live demo (thanks Don Heppleman) of the STPONE D-Star data machine from the State of Minnesota Emergency Operations Center.  It was interesting to hear from some of the staff there on what they are interested in seeing.  One requested feature is the ability to print out messages.  The idea is if you need 25 sheets of plywood for boarding up storm damage, it is helpful to have on paper the exact size and thickness of the plywood.   We are investigating the notion of adding a form to Citadel to let you enter and print messages is ICS 213 or ARRL Radiogram format.  We got some strong coaching to use ICS forms, like IC 205 to document our plans and frequencies used for events.  This is good advice.  The IC 205 form is pretty easy to use.  We think the State EOC Team in various capacities will be joining us in 2009 for the Marathon. 

We discussed our idea of using phone numbers as the key field for missing persons tracking.  The apparent Federal standard is first name /last name which is fine too.  We are not fond of using Social Security numbers. 

Our local school district last week had 3500 computers and 41 servers infected with the Conflicker virus/worm.  These machines have been offline for more than eight days.  I told our hosts at the State EOC that they would never be getting a call from us that our system (providing backup, when all else fails volunteer emergency communications) had been hacked from the Internet as we do not connect to the Internet or use Windows.    This is what the old computer security orange books called an "air gap."  Those who have been pleading with us to connect to or link to the Internet- we do support very controlled served agency gateways/uplinks that could be used in a dire emergency but that is it.  There are a zillion ways to commercially reach the Internet- we are not one of them. 

Other groups with different mission statements are encouraged to put up Internet linked D-Star systems as that technology is pretty cool.  A ham from Iowa drove up to attend our D-Star User's Group meeting, and is hoping we can get a linked system (using the Icom gateway software) up soon.  Any takers?

News: 2/16/09: We have requested County grant funding for a 440 UHF voice/data D-Star module for our STPONE site.  And we need to start adding more UPS power to several of the sites.  Our primary Minneapolis site has been up more than a year - that is 100% uptime in 2008 for those who are counting. 

News: 2/15/09: There is still some mystery on getting ID-1 radios to talk to our repeaters.  The problems can be traced to RF paths and settings.  Here is a screen shot from this morning, about ten air miles from each of three repeaters.  The beam is pointed at the Mining ARC system, and two other repeaters can be reached off the side lobes of a 24 element beam at 20 feet on 100 feet of LMR-400.  The antenna used is low tech these days- very similar to that used by the 802.11 folks for long hauls. At the top is an MFJ tri band antenna ($99)  (2M/440/1.2) and below that is the beam.  Two systems can be reached from the omni antenna. 

Note the settings on the bottom screen.  If you don't have multiple connected repeaters via Icom software/gateways/assist ports, RPT2 has to be deselected.  The A/S suffix on RPT1 seems to not matter.  The "Caller" callsign suffix issue bears some investigation.  If you are getting flashes of the *repeater* call sign on your ID-1 screen that is a good sign on the RF path.  172.16.0.20 is the address of the little web server- .20 is our standard for the web/Citadel servers.  Note that address is non routable across the Internet :-). 

News: 2/14/09: News Flash to Amateur Radio Manufacturers: Direct OEM and retail sales of Microsoft Windows XP ceased on 30 June 2008.  Most new  laptop and desktop computers are equipped with 64 bit microprocessors and do not have serial ports standard.  Windows Vista Beta 1 (5112) was released to TechNet/MSDN users on 7/29/2005.  The final RTM version of Windows Vista was released to MSDN/TechNet subscribers (6000)  on 11/16/2006.  If you still can't get your Windows Vista (64 bit) USB or other drivers to work, you need to hire smarter engineers or go into the wind up toy or t-shirt business. 

News: 2/7/09: We will be starting a Twin Cities D-Star User's Group.  The first meeting is 2/7 at 2PM at Radio City in Mounds View. 

News: 2/1/09: We have a dozen IP/SIP phones on hand, so will be deploying an IP phone system to support the 2009 Marathon.  Ideally, we can use an appliance sized computer, to avoid the space and power drain of a desktop.  We have two flavors of phones- Cisco 7905G (SIP, 48V DC power/POE) and more of the Sipura / Linksys SPA-841 (5 volt DC) units.  It might be easier to come up with 5V DC power vs. 48V DC in our trailers, via solar panels, etc.  One new challenge - an ad-hoc power over Ethernet strategy.  POE is used extensively for IP phones and wireless access points. 

News: 1/14/09: The final, detailed report on the performance of the new digital Motorola Apco 25 /ARMER public safety voice radio system at the 35W Bridge Collapse incident was published in December 2008.  Anecdotal indications right after the incident were quite positive, and these findings were confirmed in the report.  The radios performed well in the challenging conditions at the river disaster scene, which was well below average grade level. 

There was a fair amount of discussion of who was assigned to what trunk/talk groups etc.  One interesting finding was just that listening to a given talk group used up system capacity.  So if you hear of an incident and "tune in" you use up scarce resources across the system when your radio registers to that talk group.  This was a fairly small incident as disasters go, so a renewed focus on training and channel discipline seems to be in order.  The mass issuance of these radios to volunteer groups, given the fairly high cost and finite nature of the channel capacity, does not seem prudent.  Another strategy is for systems to restrict talk groups to local "membership" - you can have wide area ones, but you need to limit far away users from joining local talk groups. 

News: 1/10/09: The New York Times is reporting today that the $2B contract in New York State to build a statewide data network in that State for public safety purposes is close to cancellation.  According to the copyrighted story, after $52m in work in two counties, the system was unsatisfactory.  The winning bidder, M/A Com, apparently underbid Motorola by $1B.  We built our Statewide Packet Network here in Minnesota in 2002-2005 for about $8000, which covers 75% of the population.

A guess would be they underestimated the number of sites/towers they would need.  New York State has a lot of hills.  These very effectively block radio signals.  The larger cell phone companies have an average of 1000 cell sites per state.  $2B does not buy a lot of sites, and sites are hard to get, etc.   

News: 1/3/09: Our donated and surplus laptop computer "fleet" did not fare well during the 2008 MTCM.  Out of a dozen units, perhaps three were working at 100% capacity.  So for 2008 we are upgrading.  All units will be running legal copies of Windows 2000 Professional at least, and all 802.11b wireless cards have been retired.  Just one 802.11b card takes the whole network from 54 mbps down to 11.  All new 802.11g cards will support 100mw output power and WPA.  We are going to support Family Medical with diversity receive antennas on the data trailer in 2009 as well.    Windows Update is a two edged sword- good for security, bad for "thin" temporary networks. 

News: 12/18/08: There are reports of two new Marathon races being established in the Twin Cities in 2009.  

http://www.individual.com/story.php?story=93628335

News: 11/29/08: We are happy to welcome members of the Metropolitan Hospital Compact to the D-Star system in the Twin Cities.  Amateur operators supporting member hospitals can set up accounts on the STPONE system, overlooking the Minnesota Department of Health in St. Paul.  It can be reached via packet radio on 145.01, and on D-star on 1249.000 - DHCP is enabled.  You can use your Amateur callsign for an ID.  On packet, we are working on a way so passwords are not sent in the clear.  If you use your callsign as an ID, it is Federal Crime to transmit with a fake callsign, so there is some protection.    Note this system is not on the Internet, and should present a low risk for common Internet security exploits.   

News: 11/24/08: Our highest priority radio project right now is the purchase of a UHF /440 D-Star RP-4000 module for the STPONE site.  There is a controller port and antenna ready there.    Digital voice technology is more challenging to jam, and should be more dependable under emergency conditions than FM technology. 

News: 11/24/08: We are grappling with how to handle runner supplied Personal Health Records during the Marathon.  The idea is if runners provide basic information on pre-existing conditions and medications being taken and allergies, medical treatment during the event would be safer and more effective.  The issue is we (volunteers) are nervous trying to secure that data.  Ideally, runners would enter it once, and for a given race, healthcare professionals (i.e. MDs) could securely access that information if needed.  We are looking at two widely available platforms - Google Health and Microsoft Health Vault.  This would also further the cause of national adoption of electronic health record technology, as runners (and the Sports Medicine Community) are very leading edge in healthcare technology adoption and research.     

News: 11/17/08: Here is a link to the new Minnesota Mobile Medical Unit - we need to see what associated communications volunteers it has.

  http://www.health.state.mn.us/news/mmu.html

News: 11/17/08: The Minnesota Hospital Compact is looking for some help and we have offered to nose into that space.  Our big data networks are done, and getting served agencies on them is a good next step. 

News: 11/15/08: Dan reminded us that the ID-1s do not have an IP address, and we are using them as bridges to networks behind them, so a larger address block might be better- say a /28 or larger.  And there was more discussion that routing protocol overhead is not good.   The notion of a fixed /24 per repeater /ARAP system seems to still have merit.   

News: 11/9/08: Peter has come up with an idea to use DHCP and /29 subnets.  The idea is all ID-1 attached networks connecting to the repeaters would get assigned a /29 address, and we would use OSPF to ensure the IDs could talk to each other via the Ethernet on the Linux appliance.  This would replace DNAT.  We would retain the .1 to .20 addresses on each repeater for fixed services, like .1 for the repeater and .20 for the web server.  We made good progress on a design for our new Field Hospital Management System, based on a locked down version of our current database server.   We are going to make extensive use of handheld devices for triage, admissions, bedside care and remote secure inquiry.  Handheld device triage input is used by the US DoD. 

News: 11/9/08: We have a request to get some uplinks going to test the Red Cross Safe and Well system on our network. 

News: 10/24/08: The underlying D-Star DD protocol does not seem to support error correction.  So the overall system relies on the upper layer protocols to handle retransmission.  Web browsers don't seem to care much- they get slow on poor RF paths with lots of packet loss.  FTP on the Linux appliances is not as happy, and Max is reporting some corrupted tar files.  It might be time to dredge up some of the bulletproof file transfer packages like Xmodem - maybe we need one of our own- "Dmodem" for D-Star. 

News: 10/22/08: We are resisting the call to pile more applications on our NeoWare Linux appliance computers.  I think we are going to call these "Amateur Radio Routers" since they have all the services we use- AX.25, TCP/IP, D-Star services, etc.  Faster ones could support VoIP/SIP, repeater control, IRLP, etc.    Then there is mesh networking.  If you want an actual database or email server, that needs to be on a regular computer we think. 

News: 10/21/08:  Max is reporting he has upgraded all four of our D-Star systems to support DHCP.   Alan's has for some time.  We are retaining our separate subnets to facilitate linking.  

News: 10/20/08: Programming D-star radios can seem complicated.  There are just three things you need to program for basic voice repeater operations.  The Icom manuals, likely translated from Japanese, are inscrutable:

Mycall (the U82 book on P. 11 says this is "your" call sign - see below)  - This is the call sign of the radio owner - i.e. you

Yourcall (not to be confused with "your call" above) what Icom calls the "desired station" - i.e. somebody else - use CQCQCQ - lets you talk to anybody 

RPT1 - use the call of your local repeater.  You can get confused with a second repeater and remote repeaters and suffixes.  Just put in the call of your local machine to start. 

If this is right, you will hear local operators talking.  If it sounds like Donald Duck, that means the RF signal is weak- use a better antenna. 

News: 10/18/08: We are looking for tower climbers.  No experience needed- we have a ton of expertise and equipment - (belts, etc) and can train -but we are getting some projects that we need a larger crew for.  The latest one, the link build-out at Monticello, needs almost 1000 feet of hardline pulled and seven antennas, all at the 110+ foot level.    

News: 10/16/08:  We have been calling in all of our markers in trying to develop a Northwest receive site for the 146.85 repeater.  This machine is, and had been for almost 30 years the primary repeater for Metro Skywarn volunteers, and has several new jobs, such as supporting the Area Hospital Compact.  Storms come from the Northwest as a rule, and we want our spotters to be there looking for rotating wall clouds, etc.  The .85 system can be heard out there, but can't hear the spotters.  After three in person meetings with area elected government officials, we have identified a candidate site.  More to follow. 

News: 10/14/08: There was some drive time activity on the 442.90 D-Star voice repeater here - I think the FM machines are not very lively and some folks might have moved here.  We are going to set up a voice ID-1 machine in Ramsey County this winter.

News: 10/10/08: Several of us are going up to our site in Monticello, MN on Saturday, 10/18 to install seven antennas and several repeater systems, to finish the long planned voice radio link from the Twin Cities to Brainerd, and get the Superlink going again.  Anyone interested in helping can send a note to Paul, K0LAV.  

News: 10/6/08:  The over 100 Amateur Radio volunteers (we were a few of thousands of community volunteers at the event) had a cool, damp but fun day at the 2008 Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon.  Our new D-Star data repeaters performed flawlessly.  Everything went well- it was great practice all the way around.  The level of runner injuries was very low.  That made us all happy.  We ran six formal voice nets, and trained in some new operators.  The level of cooperation across the various public safety and medical organizations was flawless.  Life is good.

Above is the 2008 Medical Tent the day before.  Don brought his tower trailer (center) with 2x UHF business band antennas and our 440 Net 4 antennas.  To the right is the data trailer - 1.2G antenna for Minneapolis East, (10 miles away), packet antenna (145.67) and 802.11b for the finish area.  On the front of the trailer is a mobile whip for STPONE on 1.2G.  Running two D-Star data 100 kilobit repeater uplinks 2 MHz apart was no problem.  We can scale up for massive events this way. 

A picture of Net 1 (Golden Valley Public Center) from K0BUD.  Max from our Data Team is on the left.

Net 3 (St. Paul Fire Department Communications Center) from Bill Hughes.  Doug Reed installed an ID-1 the week before the race and they got into the system via STPONE.

A surprise visit from an alumni- Tim Neu, our first Linux Systems Manager- he did the first install of Trivnet (our database and packet radio /TCP-IP interface) for us.  He volunteered in Medical Records/Admissions. 

It was soggy but cool - decent running weather for us in 2008.

Our Medical tent at 5:00 AM race morning- all set. 

Peter in the data trailer -  behind him is the new (to us) Sun Netra server- and Trivnetdb 2.0 which he re-wrote for 2008, also the MPLSE uplink, the packet radio, and the STPONE uplink.   There is a new (to us) ID-800 as well.  We are going to try to run the 2009 event 100% on D-Star data, and trying to further phase in digital voice.  Net 3 was on APCO-25 again this year.  We are currently about half digital. - 2/3 of the data and 1/3 of the voice. 

An unknown Medical volunteer, Dr. Roberts (c) and Dr. Morrison (r) working triage outside of the tent.  Dr. Morrison keeps explaining triage - it sounds simple- "chest pain- into a rig to the ER; ice pack or blister- self help table; everybody else goes in the tent" I think that is Ryan in the doorway in a yellow shirt doing check in.

Three of around eight electric carts failed in the wet conditions and impacted all kinds of logistics activities.  It has been popular in recent years to have ham operators and MDs team up on carts and zoom around taking care of down runners- they can maneuver around barricades and crowds and even across lawns, taking care to not hit underground sprinkler heads ($$$). 

A steady supply of rigs (and places to send patients) is the key in mass casualty incidents- St. Paul Fire and HCMC EMS did their usual outstanding job.  We used MNTRAC to track hospital capacity and transports. 

News: 10/5/08: Here is the 2008 Post Race Letter from Dr. Roberts: 

Thanks to all of you who spent the day helping the runners.

You did a great job in challenging conditions for both the runners and many of you who were stationed outside in the rain.

This is the first time we have had any significant rain during the race and it increased our early encounters.

Once the rain stopped, we saw a significant decrease in encounters and it was almost "boring".

Thanks again and I hope to see all of you again next year.

 As always, if you have suggestions to improve the medical team, email me with your thoughts so we can discuss them in the steering committee.  We made several changes on the fly today that improved care and outcomes.

 Cheers,

Bill Roberts

Medical director

News: 10/4/08: It's Marathon Weekend in the Twin Cities.  We are currently running multiple D-Star DD mode data uplinks this year from our data trailer on the State Capitol Grounds, to our repeater systems in Ramsey and Hennepin counties.  We discovered late last week our new microwave antenna on the St. Paul Fire Department Communications Center (Net 3) is blocked by a building from line of sight to Minneapolis.  We are running Net 3 on our new STPONE site, and Net 2 on MPLSE.  Last year we ran a single feed from the data trailer to one repeater.  There are several other ways to make this work- the key is the DNAT software Max put our four thin client repeater controllers.  We are testing an iPhone as a medical admissions client system in the Hospital Tent.  We have been requested to integrate the databases for 2009.  The Marine Corps Marathon does this- we have been hesitant on the HIPAA front here, but a secure database and network design should make this possible.  The idea is the Ham Radio (Part 97) side of things gets a "public" view, and the inside of the Medical Tent (now 40X80 feet) gets a secure, encrypted view over 802.11 with a VPN running. 

News: 10/1/08: If you are having trouble getting connected with ID-1s in DD mode, remember the end computer IP address masks *must* be compatible.  The easiest way to accomplish this is to have them be an exact match.  So ours are 255.255.255.0.  ID1s do not seem to be aware of IP addresses- they just move Ethernet packets around but care about callsigns.  See our directions below. 

News: 9/28/08:  We had a sighting of the actual Dennis Boone, KB8ZQZ, (L below) who wrote Trivnetdb for us a few years back.  I was telling the audience at the TARP/DCC Conference in Chicago how grateful we were for his work and there he was.  Pictured with him on the right in the photo is Jeff Goeke-Smith, who in working with him on a Ricochet project.  It is being reported that large quantities of remaining hardware have found their way into friendly hands via an asset purchase.  Dennis is showing a 900 MHz spectrum analyzer that uses the Ricochet USB hardware platform.  Talk about a small world...

News: 9/19/08:  Our fourth Twin Cities D-Star high speed data repeater and newest full time 145.01 packet gateway, STPONE, is operational on an excellent downtown St. Paul commercial site @260' AGL.  Many thanks to all those who helped out over the last few months.  We now have two systems serving Ramsey County and two serving Hennepin County and one on air spare.  The new system overlooks the MN Department of Health, State Emergency Operations Center and St. Paul Fire Department.   It is in clear view of the State Capitol and will also serve the 2008 Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon. 

News: 9/17/08: Alan is reporting quality control problems with Comet base station antennas - improperly soldered internal parts on GP95s and GP3s.  You need to test SWR before installation.  We have ourselves had in service failures on GP21s due to wobbling and the base set screw popping out. 

News: 9/17/08: K0LAV, Paul, has developed a voice radio setup for the Marathon Operations Center that we manage.  It consists of two Motorola Maxtrac 2 channel radios in a metal case with power supply.  With the channels pre-programmed to the main and backup repeater for each radio net, we cannot have race day radio programming issues.  We'll see :-)

News: 9/16/08: Our newest repeater was delivered to the site today.  We expect it to be on the air this week.

News: 9/16/08:  We need voice operators for Net 1 on the Marathon - contact K0BUD     via N0OEL@aol.com  

News: 9/15/08: We will be presenting on Saturday 9/27 at the annual TAPR Conference in Chicago right after lunch.  Our talk, on the future of volunteer emergency communications, is called "It's the Network"- rumor has it magazine editors are down there "trolling for articles" :-)

News: 9/11/08: There is a an interesting article in a trade magazine, Network World, on 8/25/08 about a concept called disruption tolerant networks.  These are used in field deployments and are designed to withstand outages.  The idea is packets keep trying to find a way to the destination. 

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/082208-dtn-networks.html

News: 9/10/08: The St. Paul Downtown site project is back rolling again.  We plan to install it in the next two weeks.  We have some more ideas for projects, now that the D-Star Phase 1 is nearly done.

1. A packet /voice link to Mankato.  This is needed for the Health Department.  One action item- find a nice water tank about half way and get a tri band antenna on it.  Then a nice cabinet at the base, and some feed line.  Then we can install packet, voice links etc as needed.

2. The Twin Cities to Rochester corridor needs an intermediate hop someplace.

News: 9/4/08:

Just an early reminder that next weekend, Saturday Sept 13, is the next

TwinsLAN member meeting. The usual time and usual place, 9:30AM at Pavek.

As usual, feel free to join us for breakfast at Byerly's behind Target,

south from Pavek. Max & I are usually there sometime around 8AM.

We haven't yet planned a speaker for after the meeting. Who has

suggestions to fix that? I'm out of ideas, so please pass them along.

What would you like to hear about? What have you been doing recently?

Did you use packet or digital modes during Field Day or on the

DXpedition to Lake Wobegon? Found any good tricks to pass along? Got

your APRS tracker working in the RV? Been using WinLink 2000 at all? We

could certainly use a Program Director for the TwinsLAN meetings.....

And we'll be doing another Packet Workshop after the meeting. The

scheduled time is Noon to 6PM. The location is Kelly Black's work place

over on Douglas Drive just south of Duluth Ave west of the Hwy 100 exit.

Better directions in the Workshop email or probably on the TwinsLAN web

page.

This will probably be the last workshop before the Twin Cities Marathon,

so we'll be trying to do final check-out of computers and D-STAR stuff

we'll use for the event. Hopefully by then we'll have the next D-STAR

digital repeater installed. This one is planned for downtown St Paul so

it will hopefully be easy to hit from the finish line.

73, Doug Reed, N0NAS.

News: 8/30/08: There were some folks from the Federal Government at Radio City - they were in town for the RNC and getting parts for their radio truck.  I was bragging about our data networks, and they asked about our provisions for emergency i.e. solar power.  Good question.  We have a little grant money left, and getting one or more systems up on 100% solar power is a priority.  

News: 8/21/08: Given that the R.N.C. will be in town shortly, we are going to declare a network freeze and stick to repairs only between now and then. That is a new policy for us- try to lock down the configurations a week before the events.  

News: 8/17/2008: There is an interesting article in the September issue of QST on Project 25 radio technology.  This is another open standard for digital radios.  We have so far been underwhelmed by the digital voice aspects of D-Star - at the user interface level it seems to be too complex, counter-intuitive and not plug and play when used with repeaters. Our extensive mass casualty incident experience here indicates that systems that require a lot of user training and configuration are not helpful in the press of events with ad-hoc volunteer resources.  Our Marathon systems at the user interface (i.e. laptop) do not require any training, and telephones and well designed voice radio systems should not either.  If the Project 25 voice radio gear was easy to use we might like it.  The idea would be a box of radios would be issued- "Select Channel 1" is about the limit of user training that seems reasonable.  Further proof of this is in the level of difficulty some still have with "CTSS" tones on 30 year old voice radios. One could pre-build and clone radios but what to do about callsigns. 

One idea for somebody like Icom is to come out with some D-Star radios that are cheap, but require pre-programming the way Motorola radios do.  So the radios are $150 or $200 and you mass-program and issue them.  They could be digital only for that matter.  Groups could buy them in bulk and pre-program them for large scale go-kits the way governments do with Project 25 radios. 

News: 8/17/2008:  After a series of meetings with the Marathon Medical and Race Operations leadership, we have our plan in place.  A little testing is in order, and we have a new capability in the plan.  We are going to try to have on-site access to MNTRAC for logging and monitoring hospital transports and capacity.  And we need to system test our new Sun server.  We are out of space at the finish line in the secured area for any new large medical assets like tractor-trailer based mobile hospitals- we have been offered two of them so far. 

We need more Amateur Radio volunteers as we have a role in keeping track of golf carts and small "gator" type mini medical vehicles which can run in a crowded area with the roads blocked off.  Several of these are available to the Minneapolis Fire Department, etc.  We are also integrating runner supplied personal health information with our medical record form on a secure system to provide history information to the medical staff when someone arrives for treatment.   

News: 8/10/08: The talk down in Rochester went well.  After we left there were reports of "outstate grant money" being available.  This is interesting, but we long ago learned that it takes four or five in person meetings to get big infrastructure projects off the ground, and that local political leaders like to only deal with local folks.  Fast talking outsiders are not often helpful, and the smaller the city/county the more this is true.   After at least five less than productive 120 mile round trips in the last few years, we are convinced we are right here.  

News: 7/29/08: We will be speaking for the first part of the ARES Forum (around 9:30-10:30 AM) on 8/9 (Saturday) at the ARRL Dakota Division Convention in Rochester, MN.

 Complete Information at http://www.rarexpo.org/

News: 7/28/08: Dan Skripka is reporting the last installment of our matching grant has been approved.  Thanks Dan!  We need to buy some more antennas and may be investing in an electrician for a site install. The antenna we like best is the Comet GP-95.  The one at the Mining ARC works great. 

News: 7/27/07: The final system test is complete on the hardware for our St. Paul #1 site.  There is a Bloomington tower site available @160 feet - we do not need it for 145.67 and we do not have any D-Star repeater equipment in stock.  The two priorities we can see is for one of the "backyard" systems to move there,

News: 7/25/08:

The next workshop is tomorrow at the Golden Valley location, 9AM till around 5PM. Main project is to try and get the next D-STAR data repeater ready for install in St Paul and whatever else we can do in our preparations for the RNC and the MTC Marathon.

News: 720/08: All the parts needed for the St. Paul Downtown #1 Site are in hand, thanks to the grant for Dan Skripka and the support from Metro Skywarn.  The machine is now running in test mode- the D-Star is up we need to add on the packet.  We got a new radio for that. 

News: 7/16/08: At our "East" repeater/node site we are having stray RF issues (?) which are causing our Linux Thin Client system to crash.  So Max added in the capability to reboot if there is a kernel panic.  This seems sensible as we are all about reliability.  The very long (50 foot) stock Ethernet cable on the RP-1D might be a factor. 

Max:     "This is the command I put in rc.local to get the kernel to reboot after a panic:

  echo "5" > /proc/sys/kernel/panic

Normally, that value is 0 - don't reboot automatically, changing it to a non-zero value causes the system to reboot after that many seconds. A good thing for remote or hard to get at servers. There are other ways to do the same thing, sysctl being another."

News: 7/3/08: Our new St. Paul Downtown #1 repeater/node site has been approved by the site owner.  So we have a cabinet and are building up the equipment as we speak.  The plan is to have it installed by 8/15 at the latest.  It will support D-Star DD mode and have a packet gateway. 

News: 7/1/08: It is being reported there is a new State Van under construction that will be used for emergency medical response.  We would like to get that van set up with D-Star equipment as well, and test it this fall at the Marathon.

News: 6/30/08: We got copied on a note today from the Minnesota Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, who had the following advice on which ICS/NIMS courses to take:

"Simply, if you are an active participant in an event you need (ICS) 700,100, and 200. If you are making decisions about how the resources are used, requesting or sending, or leading resources, you need the additional training of the (ICS) 800, 300, and 400 courses"

News: 6/23/08:  Alan has made some homebrew 1.2G cavities.  These go along with the homebrew 1.2G beams.  We are going to pester him to make a duplexer next. 

News: 6/23/08: Dennis Boone, KB8ZQZ. who wrote Trivnetdb for us way back when,  has fixed the Trivnetdb source distribution site

http://www.kb8zqz.org/trivnetdb/

News: 6/22/08: We can report the RP-1D units do support DHCP pass-thru.  We tested it this morning.  Doug Reed, N0NAS was supervising, so there was no funny business.  By the way the Icom manual says to use uppercase letters only for the repeater call sign- the manual is right.  Peter, KD8GBL, also had the idea to test PPPoE - that works as well.  The idea is that can be used for many to many ID-1 connections via the repeater.  We do that today with DNAT, but it has to be set up in advance.  We tested two ID-1s talking to our newest repeater via PPPoE- thanks Radio City. 

News: 6/21/08:  The ARRL-ARES 6/20 E-Letter is reporting the following, which is encouraging - he is viewing the Icom ID-1 as yet another tool in our toolbox.

There is new software entitled JNOS for passing e-mail messages over Amateur Radio during emergencies:

<http://ronhashiro.htohananet.com/am-radio/packet/jnos.html>

Readers can download the program, and try it as noted in the documentation. Configuration is simple: it takes only ten to fifteen minutes editing in your call sign, password, and log-on banners to get started. The beauty of JNOS is the sending and receiving of e-mail messages over the Internet as well as Amateur Radio seamlessly. It can print incoming e-mail messages on a printer unattended, one message to a sheet, just like a fax machine.

JNOS will also take advantage of the ICOM ID-1 in digital data mode, and I'm in the process of testing and documenting that configuration.

At some point, I'd like to implement this at Hawaii State CD and Oahu DEM, when a sufficient critical mass has been implemented. -- Ron Hashiro, AH6RH, Honolulu, Hawaii State Civil Defense RACES

News: 6/17/08: 

The next packet & radio workshop will be Sunday June 22. The location for this workshop is Golden Valley. The workshop will run from 9AM until 5 or 6 pm

The focus of this workshop will again be on various D-STAR projects. We have a lot of work to do getting ready for some installations this summer. I am NOT going to have much in the way of test equipment and tools available. But if you have small projects we'll still be trying to help you complete them. If you tell me ahead of time you need something special, maybe I can bring it.....

The location is 1710 N Douglas Dr, Suite 285, Golden Valley, 55422.

 From Hwy 100, north of I-394, exit on Duluth St. Go west of Hwy 100 about 1/2 mile to Douglas Drive. You will go south from Duluth St and watch for the railroad tracks. Immediately on the north side of the tracks is a long, low, 2 story office building on the east side of the road. We'll be in Suite 285 but you will need to knock on the outside door or ask on 146.520 simplex for entry. If on Hwy 55, go north on Douglas Dr and it should be the second railroad crossing.

If you want a map, Google search for:

   1710 North Douglas Drive, 55422

If you are worried about getting lost, the Duluth Street exit from Hwy 100 is the best. You go west on Duluth St and it ends at a T intersection. Turn left, go south a few blocks and you will come to the railroad tracks, the building on the left is the one you want. Very hard to miss this way....

I hope to see you there! The next workshop will be in July. Come this Sunday and help choose some dates.

73, Doug Reed, N0NAS.

News: 5/28/08:  There is a list of projects building for our next open work session. 

Formally test and document DCHP pass-thru on RP-1Ds.  Does it work?  The jury is out.  We are reading reports both ways. 

Build D-Star system #4.  We need power, a cabinet, Linux system, etc.  System #4 will include a Packet gateway.  For the moment, System #4 is our lab repeater, though Alan might bring his portable repeater.  We are assigning 172.16.4.1 and .20 (/24) to the new system and might use 1249.000.   

System test the new 2008 server that Peter built.  The existing one then goes into hot standby backup status.  We could also test multiple ID-1 to ID-1 connectivity  to see if two server uplinks could be used at once.    In production in a disaster, we might have ten remote stations, each accessing two remote servers as an example at once.  This would let us support multiple served agencies. We will run two live ID-1 to repeater uplinks in 2008.  We should have six repeaters to choose from. 

System test the two new vans.  Antennas in these as well as the internal Ethernet and 802.11 capability will need to be verified. 

News: 5/25/08: We are getting offers to borrow more high end mobile communications vans for the Marathon.  As of right now, a new 50 foot mobile fire command center may be joining our "fleet", and we are also working on the MN State Mobile EOC van.  If both had D-Star ID-1s, they could tie into our database trailer at the finish line via our repeater systems.  We can loan them equipment out of our radio pool for the event.  It might be nice to have say five ID-1s going back to one ID-1 at the database end.  We have DNAT on our repeater back end systems set up to support multiple uplinks from multiple remote databases.  We continue to not be fans of the databases co-located with repeaters model. 

News: 5/17/08: The American Radio Relay League has announced a change in direction for the organization.  There is a new "Fifth Pillar" - technology.  This is a timely move, as this heads off a very strong movement in the organization to become largely an historical society.  As someone who owns more than 75 history books this is OK, but was causing trouble in several key areas.  One is with the recruiting of young people who expect us to teach them current technical skills, the FCC rules, which reference "the state of the radio art," and served agencies, who are tired of hearing about the limitations of 30-80 year old radio operating modes, given the other choices  they have.

ARRLWeb: ARRL NEWS: ARRL Introduces "Fifth Pillar" at Dayton Hamvention®

News: 5/16/08: We have seen a 15% failure rate on the little five dollar RJ45 F-F adapters that go on the Ethernet pigtails on new out of the box Icom ID-1s.  If the Ethernet seems "dead" on yours, try a different adapter.  Spare ones of these are a handy item to have if you need to extend RJ45 cables anyhow.  These cables are used for other applications, such as microphones and serial cables.  It is helpful to own an RJ45 crimper as well.   

News: 5/15/08:  At the last work session we issued an ID-1 radio to Max, who is able to now drive around and test the systems.  We have at least 10 D-Star repeaters in Minneapolis/St. Paul.  One issue- can we get these listed in the ARRL Repeater Directory?  The issue for us is the DD machines by themselves are not technically repeaters and also do not do well on shared frequencies.  So our systems need to be coordinated, even though they are simplex.  

News: 5/11/08:  We have long suspected there is not a lot of spare emergency room capacity in major US cities, based on our experience at the Marathon here.  A story in USA Today on 5/6/08, while having limited scientific validity (one random sample was taken) showed that Minneapolis had five empty emergency room beds.  Other cities in the sample were in about the same shape.  Washington DC had zero, and Chicago had eight.  The notion of improvised facilities that would somehow be set up to handle a big flood of cases was discussed.  Those who are skeptical about the role of Amateur Radio in disaster recovery need to read that - there is no other group that has this level of experience in ad-hoc communications. 

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-05-05-citiesready_N.htm

News: 5/10/08: Peter built us a new production server for the 2008 Marathon on a rack mounted 1U Sun Netra server.  These have several advantages, and they are compact and cheap enough ($50) to install permanently places like in trailers.  Hauling desktop computers around is not much fun.  The one he found has two Ethernets and two serial ports- just enough, (one D-Star uplink, one 802.11, one packet TNC and the server console) and built in RAID.  We also have a new release of our web server code and more database fields.  We are upgrading our IP phone system as well.  We think the last $2000 of our current grant will go to one more ID-1, and then some antennas and power supplies and lightning arrestors. 

Prediction:  IP Phone systems will be as important to ham radio post 9/11/01 as war surplus prop pitch motors were after WWII. 

News: 4/24/08:  The final US Fire Administration report on the 35W Bridge Collapse was issued and is interesting reading.  The strong and effective event response was marked by good communications practices, a solid following of Incident Command System (aka NIMS) procedures and the fact that the agencies involved in relief efforts had trained together.  The number of EMS runs (50) was very similar to that from the 2007 Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon. 

The concept of "freelancing" - self dispatching of emergency resources without orders from the Incident Commander was mentioned.  This is one thing volunteer groups like ours need to be vigilant on.  Volunteers who show up at a disaster scene without being requested may have good intentions, but add to the burden of the Incident Commander, as they then have to be looked after from a safety and logistics perspective. 

http://www.usfa.dhs.gov/downloads/pdf/publications/tr_166.pdf

News: 4/23/08: We have been given approval to proceed with our new Minneapolis Downtown #2 site.  We just picked up our fourth RP-1D D-Star DD mode repeater- thanks Radio City.  Exactly where this machine will go depends- one good choice is St. Paul #1 depending how the paperwork goes there, or the Minneapolis #2 site.   We are expecting one more grant shortly- the question is- do we ask Dan to order Repeater #5, or do we add 440 capability on to one of the machines we have?    Icom is reported to be out of first generation D-Star repeaters as part of the "Buy Five" promotion. 

News 4/23/08: We are pestering the ARRL to do something about callsign authentication.  Right now it is trivial to spoof a callsign in an email message.  When we get a message from W0XYZ, is it really from W0XYZ or someone pretending to be W0XYZ?  So using off the shelf digital signature /public key infrastructure software would fix this.  There are those (we are in that camp) who oppose encryption of amateur radio traffic - this is not encryption it's authentication.  The FCC rules require it actually "97.219...(1) Authenticate the identity of the station from which it accepts communication on behalf of the system."   If the ARRL does not take the torch here we might try it ourselves.  The other thing you can do with this technology is to sign/authenticate message content- this is like a checksum to prevent/detect tampering with the content.  This is part of what is called in the security business "non repudiation" - did you really send that message. 

News 4/14/08: We need to think about upgrading our 802.11 facilities and to get our mesh networking research project moving again.  We are meeting with the Medical and EMS teams for the Marathon soon, and will get our summer work plan in order.  We got a little busy last fall on infrastructure work and need to see what they are asking for.  One idea they liked was a "bed dashboard" application for the hospital tent - to show who was where and provide a live view of capacity - one key requirement is deciding where incoming patients need to go, and to keep the ER section open for new critical cases. 

News 4/14/08:  We are getting calls and notes about the new "RMS" /Winlink software.  We are mostly network builders here, and these networks should be an ideal platform for this software.  Jerry, N0MR,  is a leading expert in MN on this topic.  One interesting issue - we are seeing more packet activity in Wisconsin on 145.61 and will need to build some bridging stations.  Our practice would be to install two or three gateways if we decide to go ahead. 

News 4/11/08: We may be getting two new repeater/node sites, including possible one in St. Cloud.   Work is underway on the packet gateway at MNSTP and we are experimenting with DHCP on that machine.  DHCP is not looking good at the moment.  One hunch is it is a broadcast based protocol and D-Star DD mode (via repeaters) does not seem fond of broadcast protocols (for good reason). 

News 4/2/08: We are again putting the Medical Communications Team together to support the 2008 Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon.  We are looking for volunteers, and have openings out on the race course and at the finish line.  It should be possible this time to run the data side of the medical support operation all on D-Star DD with packet radio as backup.  We need to get an ID-1 to the Twin City FM Club and one in the Ramsey County EOC.  The Ramsey County one is on order. 

The team is organized as follows:

Chair

Asst. Chair /Finish Line/ Operations Center

Net Control Net One /Volunteer Check in

Net Control Net Two

Net Control Net Three

Are the main leaders, and then we have departments at the Hospital Tent, Family Medical Tent, and the Remote Bus Drop off/EMS staging area, and then for the Data Trailer and database servers and for Net Four and various medical radio channels.   All operations are decentralized and the Net Controls are spread out across the geographic area.  This is helpful if there are problems- if you can't reach higher authority you just keep going, and too many radios in one place leads to RF interference and general confusion.

News: 3/26/08:  We got a new (to us) Icom ID-800H D-Star radio, which we are experimenting with.  Thanks Ed, WB0VHF.  This is for the trailer and will be used for all kinds of duties.  The setup complexity (programming all the call signs) here is a little bit of a barrier- there is of course software available for the radio which makes it easier.   It is being reported the MNSTP upgrade and packet gateway work was successful.  We'll post some screen shots. 

News: 3/22/08: A team from Twinslan and the Mining ARC are upgrading the MNSTP site to include a full time D-Star DD mode to AX.25 packet gateway.  We run one for the Marathon but have not had one online all the time.  We are also experimenting with some ideas we have for linking.  We have a new appreciation for the work that AMSAT does, as they do not get to rework anything once launched.  

News: 3/19/08: The talk down at Mankato went well.  The club there is running late model commercial equipment for their repeaters, and uses all diverse Government sites.  Some clubs run the oldest possible, often fussy repeater and data equipment for some reason. 

The question came up in Mankato: "how can we get more involved in operations and exercises?" and answer is pretty simple for them.  We have an ongoing mission to support the MN Health Department.  The club down there can meet with their local Public Health Officer (who they already know) and set up a drill/exercise- a "what if all the phones/Internet are out" kind of drill.  And move some messages around.  One group in Northern MN ran a drill last year where they distributed colored M&Ms(r) as a test of vaccine delivery.  There are outlying counties down that way that need to be engaged here as well. 

They also need to get some links built to the Twin Cities (about 66 miles and some big 1000 foot ridges away as they are at about 800' ASL).  They also need a second path to be built on packet to the Statewide Network that does not go via the Twin Cities.  Then they could become a remote hub and even a operations center/hub with a BBS system etc.  We hatched an idea for a big Statewide drill where they would be in charge.  Our thought was, if something really bad happens in the Twin Cities, do we want that event managed from the Twin Cities, or with Twin Cities based operators- no.  One idea as well- if there is a School of Public Safety at Mankato State University, they could learn exercise planning and use us as the persons to run the drills. 

Long term they can get some sites along the way to the Twin Cities on a link via packet and then upgrade that link to Microwave.  And then they can put a D-Star system in and link that in.  The National Weather Service is down their way and might a good connection point. 

News: 3/19/08: We think the MNSTP System was down for a day. Ed reset the power and are back up.  That one is borrowing 12V power from someplace and needs a dedicated late model switching power supply.  These, like the SEC 1223 units we get at Radio City, have been highly reliable and have low standby current draw.  We say "we think" as you need four things to reach a DD mode system- a good RF path, the right frequency, the right repeater callsign and the right IP address.  If you have just the IP address wrong as I did this morning the ID-1 gives you this ?KC0TQI message back from the repeater which is a version of "I'm here" which is good.   

News: 3/18/08: We are promoting Dan Skripka, KE8TX  to CFO of our organization. 

News: 3/16/08: There will be a talk sponsored by the Mankato Radio Club on 3/18/08. 

“Digital Communications in Emergency Response”

Erik Westgard, NY9D will provide a presentation on the following topics...

The need for digital communications in response situations.

History of the current digital network in MN. (Packet 145.01, 145.67, APRS)

The future need for a faster digital network.

Do D-Star digital data repeaters have a place in MN?

Background Information:

Current Packet Network http://www.14567.org/

D-STAR at the 2007 Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon By Erik Westgard, NY9D

http://www.arrl.org/news/features/2008/03/01/2/?nc=1

March 18^th, 2008 @ 7:00 PM

Red Cross, 105 Homestead Road Mankato, MN

Map to Red Cross

RSVP to k0yr@arrl.net

News: 3/16/08: Dan Skripka, KE8TX, donated some money to our project, and has managed to get that matched by one of the area foundations- so we have the funding in hand today for the equipment for our St. Paul Downtown #1 site.  Thanks also to Doug Reed and to Metro Skywarn for handling the behind the scenes processing on these grants and donations.   Dan from Radio City is used to us as he knows when we call to ask him to order $3000 repeater/radio packages we never have any money at the time but it shows up from someplace at the last second like clockwork.

By the way the key to getting new sites and funding for Amateur Radio infrastructure is the proper handling of paperwork.  The days of handshake-only arrangements are long gone.  Relationships and trust are important, but all your agreements need to be in writing to protect all parties.  

News: 3/16/08:  Do weather maps work on the D-Star DD mode system- yes.  This one is a 250KB JPEG viewed on our Minneapolis Downtown #1 system- the download time was pretty good this morning- a few seconds

News: 3/15/08:  It is being reported the new rooftop antennas at the MN Health Department HQ (Freeman Building in St. Paul) are installed.  Radios of all kinds (except, interestingly, our Packet Network) and cell phones worked poorly inside that building likely due to metal film tinted windows.  There was a long struggle with the architects over outside antennas- we won :-) 

News: 3/8/08: We have a new location in progress for our workshops.  Many thanks to the Maplewood Fire Department for helping us over the years.  They are remodeling their station there and needed the space back. 

News: 3/8/08: The paperwork on our new St. Paul Downtown #1 Site is moving along.  We contacted Dan Fish up at Radio City in Mounds View about equipment for the site.    The plan is to have that on the air in <60 days.  The site is at >250' AGL and will require minimal site preparations.   We are slated (based on a conversation with Max on our Software Team) to have Packet (145.67) to D-Star linking there.

News: 3/1/08: Our 2007 Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon story is on the ARRL Web Site today

 http://www.arrl.org/news/features/2008/03/01/2/?nc=1

News: 3/1/08: Here is a note from Tom Azlin, who runs the digital aspects of the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, DC.  They started using L-Band D-Star a year before we did, and have a much larger race in terms of runners. 

3/1/08

Very cool Erik!

It is indeed a really good D-Star public service application.  Here in the Washington DC area we are about to kick off the third year of using the ID-RP2C/2D and multiple ID-1s for the Marine Corps Marathon (MCM).

Our Operational Readiness Demonstration in 2006 was switched part way through that race to the primary comms for the four demonstration aid stations.

We have a different back end set up as we plug the controller into the existing Marine Corps network at the finish line which simplified our role to the communications between the MCM finish line servers out to the seven aid stations supporting over 20,000 runners. This allowed direct access to the MCM runner databases by the officials at the aid stations using the MCM created web applications. BTW, the selection of D-Star was made by the amateur radio team and is not Marine Corps endorsement. What they see is simply using their existing applications via amateur radio.

The past two years of success with D-Star at the MCM has led to discussion of the 23cm DD system in one of the local counties to connect to emergency shelters with the EOC. This will be tested over this next year in exercises as we now have our Tysons Corner D-Star repeater up an running.

Again, great story and application Erik. We have learned a lot over the past years from how you are supporting the marathon there.

73, Tom n4zpt

MCM digital coordinator

News: 3/1/08: We are making progress on our new St. Paul Downtown #1 site.  The idea is to have our fourth D-Star DD machine there. 

News: 3/1/08: We attended a huge Healthcare Information Technology show called HIMMS 2008 in Orlando.  Avaya was there and had an emergency response truck, which is similar to the one Cisco has.  The Cisco one is called the NERV and I have toured it as well.  These have routers, and an IP PBX in there.  (So do we in our trailer- see below). They have a satellite dish and a bank of VHF/UHF public service radios.  They each also have an Icom IC7000 UHF/VHF/HF amateur radio.  One of the things they can do is interconnect the audio from the various radios and the phone system and the satellite.  This is a high tech version of the old ham radio "phone patch" in a way. Video is a big part of the system.  And they support teleconferencing.  Our ancient donated trailer has a much better antenna tower (65') than any of these state of the art money is no object vans - and big towers give you range when you are trying to access or provide emergency radio coverage. 

http://blogs.cisco.com/news/2007/11/video_ciscos_network_emergency.html

There was a nice presentation from the IT folks who run the Palomar Pomerado Health and Scripps Health hospitals during the recent San Diego wildfires.  They gave a talk on how they dealt with the wildfires, which were expected at one point by a senior fire official "to burn all the way to the ocean (the entire San Diego County)" and included the evacuation of an entire hospital.  The utilities stayed up, and they did a good job on the evacuation- around 200 patients moved in 2.5 hours.  They had a lot of problems with smoke and ash getting into ventilation systems and into buildings.  There were lots of times when they did not have good information on the unfolding crisis, but they practiced and practiced before hand.  Employees developed an interesting technique to see if their house burned down while they were at work- if their old fashioned answering machine answered, their house was still standing.  They also ran an emergency day care center as schools were closed- this helped key employees report to work. 

At the show we learned there is a priority over-ride system officials can use for cell phones to get a line in a period of overload (though this would not work if the overload was caused by too many officials who also had priority) and this can be combined with another priority system to get access to long distance services as well.

News: 2/17/08: Based on a conversation with Ed, WB0VHF who has been a big supporter of our project, and some of our served agencies, we are ready to discuss our plans for high speed data infrastructure for the RNC event on September.  We will add one more system to our network between now and then and possibly two.  The goal is to go from three to five DD Mode D-Star machines ("repeaters/ARAPs") on line by 9/1/08 under our jurisdiction.  The idea is these will be on wide area, secure, commercial/government sites and will be available for volunteer Amateur Operators supporting the agencies when they are required.  We are down to needing about $1500 to get the first new machine going.  The second one will be about $3500.  Hennepin and Ramsey Counties are both purchasing user radios for the system. 

Current Sites:

Minneapolis Downtown #1- Up

Minneapolis South/MofA/MSP Airport- Up

Mining ARC /Oakdale/St. Paul - Up

New Sites:

St. Paul Downtown #1 - site candidate in discussions

Minneapolis Downtown #2- site candidate in mind

News: 2/14/08:  Kelly helped us build a field deployable IP PBX with six phones.  The idea is if we have to build an ad-hoc Emergency Operations Center we would have telephones, which do not require control operators, and when you are running a large field hospital (as we do every year) phones are just easier.   We can tie into any existing Internet network, and bought some SIP VoIP service from an outfit way out of town.  We are using the Internet to provide ad-hoc phone service in case other types of phone services are unavailable.  We also have an analog trunk card if we do find a real phone jack. The Red Cross uses this type of technology over satellite.

News: 2/9/08: There is a work party at the Maplewood Fire Station tomorrow, 2/10- 9A to at least mid afternoon.  I am not sure on the agenda. 

News: 2/3/08: We happened to rent a copy of the movie "Live Free Die Hard" with Bruce Willis.  This movie accurately characterizes the current wild enthusiasm for putting critical SCADA utility and infrastructure control systems on the Internet.  And it should be considered the last word on why modern Internet based communications systems need a backup that is not also based on the Internet. 

News: 1/28/08: A question came up today if our system was open to general Amateur use.  The answer is yes.  We think credible backup communications systems have to be regularly tested and exercised.  This includes hands-on operator training and general use.  We also have a ton of experimentation to perform.  FM Voice was pioneered back in the 1970's.  D-Star technology is brand new, and we are helping to develop it.  This band, L-band, is unknown to most folks in Minnesota.  Actually, data over L-Band (aka DD mode) is new to almost everyone. 

News: 1/23/08:  There is an article by Craig Kuhl in the 1/15/08 issue of Wireless Week Magazine  http://www.wirelessweek.com/Article-8-Hours-Long-Time.aspx that states there was an FCC order issued after Katrina that all 210,000 US cell sites must have at least eight hours of backup power available.  The article goes on to say this requirement came about after a "stinging" post event report from the FCC: "...a lack of adequate backup power for communications facilities was a critical problem after Katrina that caused communications network interruptions and hampered recovery efforts."    The article goes on to provide a quote from Caterpillar the engine people to suggest that "more players on cell towers...(including) ham operators..." were driving an increased demand for backup power.  As we have the backup communications mission from the FCC and world wide we need to very gently remind our agencies they still need a backup communications system of some kind- and preferably more that one "layer" of backup.

News: 1/18/08: We got a donation yesterday of some surplus flat panel monitors and a big 24 port LAN switch.  We were short of both items at the last workshop.  Thanks, John Leeper.  Max is working on the routing architecture between the Linux appliances behind our repeaters that are not repeaters.  We think RIP will be fine for us.  A network convergence time of say ten minutes might be fine- the last thing you want on a fairly slow network when you have important traffic to pass is a lot of automatically generated routing chatter and flapping.   We talked to the Minnesota Department of Health - they are updating their web based emergency health information system and want the new one ready for the big Republican Convention.  Note the term "web based"  - we tested the old one on our network.  

News: 1/12/08: We got an email from the folks in Rochester, MN interested in D-Star.  Other than Internet linking to say the system at the U of M, they could also link to us up here by email.  The idea would be to set up a TCP over Packet (AX.25) VHF link between the Linux back end systems on the repeaters.  So mail could be forwarded and folks could participate in live conferences.  These is even a way to set up "linked" conference rooms under Citadel.  This could be done on 145.01.  The 145.67 network was designed to not support TCP/IP and automatic mail forwarding.  If there needed to be a faster radio channel over the 70 miles we can build one.

News: 12/30/07: We spent most of our workshop session today loading up an Asterisk VoIP system on Debian 4.0.  After a while we started pestering Doug Reed, N0NAS to let us test this over D-Star, so he set up two ID-1 radios for us in the lab.   We tried a Cisco 7905 (SIP firmware) phone on one ID-1, and the Asterisk server (+ Sipura 941 SIP phone) on the other ID-1.  We had a known good simplex DD path.  The phones could call each other but the voice quality was very very choppy.   We did not have time to research which CODEC we were using in the phones.  DD mode is simplex, and does not seem to like a full duplex stream of small packets.  We think a more "half duplex/push to talk" type voice mode would work over DD.  This was a research project, and we plan to spend some more time on it.  Phones of all kinds sometimes don't work in disasters, and the ability to make a VoIP call has been requested.  Having a phone system in our trailers seems like a good idea.  There are legal restrictions on the use of Part 97 frequencies for routine phone service.  It might work just fine and be regulation-free as another emergency communications tool for us if we use WiFi or our Ricochet network backbone.  

News: 12/29/07: We are out on the ARRL Web Site today:    http://www.arrl.org/news/features/2007/12/29/1/?nc=1 and on the front page of QRZ.COM. 

News: 12/29/07:  On re-reading the ITU G.114 spec for Voice over IP, it says one way delays of <150ms are acceptable for most applications.  We can hit this easily - this may be a good test project.  So that is why those surplus IP phones have been sitting there. 

News: 12/19/07:  Our next open workshop is at the Maplewood Fire Station on Century Avenue 12/30/07.  9:00AM-5PM.  The US Coast Guard Auxiliary is discussing starting a Ham Radio Club locally and they are asking about some advice on radio modifications.  I asked Doug to please bring the microscope and fine tip soldering iron. 

News: 12/18/07: We got a call from the folks in Mankato, MN who are interested in our new project.  They have been running a powerful 145.67 packet node down there for years, using our standard naming convention and on a tall government site.  They want to get in the high speed data game.  I think we'll go down there with our slides.  We might try to contact the TCRC or SMARTS clubs down that direction and do a "Southeast Metro" session as well.  

Our advice to them is to start saving their nickels for a D-Star controller ($1200 or so) and some RF modules, at $1400 each.  They have two good sites.  The next big project is to build a high speed data link back to the Twin Cities.  This will take several hops.  We can use Motorola Canopy equipment if we have some water tower sites.  We are building links right now on four corridors- Twin Cities to Duluth, Brainerd and Rochester plus Mankato.  It would be helpful if some of our grants were to arrive. 

News: 12/15/07: The next open workshop looks like the end of December.  It is a busy month at the Fire Station.  We also want to get back at our Mesh Networking via Open Source project. 

News: 12/15/07: It is being reported there is a new U of M DV repeater on the air on 443.425 from Moos Tower - U of M West Bank.

News:  12/1/07:  There was a note on the Minneapolis East Citadel Server from WB0ZKB, who indicated he was getting into the machine from Maple Plain, 22 air miles away, on a 900 MHz paging antenna.  So much for the "short range" argument.  A friend, Kent, KC0DGY, works for a local TV station, and their video remote truck needs to "see" the IDS Tower in Downtown Minneapolis to allow their microwave video feed to work.  He has many stories of various places around town that he knows will work and places that do not.  This reinforces the notion that mobile emergency communications vehicles need towers. 

News: 11/30/07:  We are getting emails from Metro Skywarn who wants to test live streaming video.  It should work.  We have a test repeater...or four or five.

News: 11/25/07: This morning brought a note from Kelly, KB0GBJ asking about our priority list for 2008.  Other than adding some more sites for data machines, we do need to solve the repeater/access point linking challenge using radio, as we are radio people.    Max has installed Ricochet USB (900 MHz Part 15) modems with some of the Linux repeater controllers, and these can "see" light pole mounted legacy Ricochet modems two miles away just on the little folding antennas.  We think putting an actual pole-top unit at each repeater site with a decent antenna might be enough to link the systems that are not very far (2-5 miles) apart.   We are calling this effort "Poor Man's D-Star" as the little modems are $15.00 used, and the data rate @100kbps is similar. 

In the Site Department,  our Mining site covers Downtown St. Paul well enough but we do need coverage South.  We might need to round up another water tank site.   I have another site idea which will be amusing if it happens.   We will be meeting with the MN Department of Health on the 30th, with whom our organization has a separate signed memorandum of understanding.  We gave a talk at the Twin City FM Club last week and a person in the audience slipped us a business card for another good site. 

News: 11/24/07: Our Minneapolis South site is fine, and we suspect has been the whole time.  It was full scale this morning in the Mall of America approach roads, parking lot and by the MSP Airport on a small magnet mount mobile antenna.  The notion of needing to link our machines is key, as they do not have great non LOS range- this is not LA, or Phoenix, with mountains overlooking our cites. 

It was interesting Windows Server 2008 RC1 gives you a "limited connectivity" message on the Ethernet-ID-1 connection, until the ID-1 "sees" the repeater and then the little message goes away. 

News: 11/21/07: Hennepin County is looking for us to come up another 1.2 data machine for a site they have @400 feet.    They have an idea for multiple machines linked via dedicated land lines which has considerable merit. 

News: 11/14/07: The next open workshop is November 18th in Maplewood at the East County Line Fire Station on Century- 9:00 on. 

News: 11/9/07: We are requesting that the rest of the State and Metro Area County Communications Vans and EOCs install ID-1s.  Ramsey County is working on theirs.  If we buy enough ID-1s we might be able to pull in another ARAP aka Repeater from Radio City.  We have lots of sites for another machine.  Metro Skywarn has taken title to the machine now called Minneapolis East based on a second donation from Dan Skripka- thanks Dan.  TwinsLAN is going to try to put some nice block diagrams and code samples on their web site to help others.  We need another work party to do some more development.  

News: 11/8/07: We have received a donation from the Brainerd Motorola dealer of four truckloads of late model FM VHF/UHF repeaters and duplexers and cavities.  We think there are some broken repeaters around Minnesota that need help- talk to K0LAV. 

News: 10/27/07:  We are struggling with what to call our 1.2 GHz data repeaters.  They are not repeaters.  They are not "nodes" as they don't behave like packet nodes.  So since we are a leading user of these devices we are going to come up with a name "Amateur Radio Access Points" - they look more like a $39 wireless router than anything else, and they are simplex, and not taking up two frequencies.  We would like to have the ARRL Repeater Directory list these. 

News: 10/24/2007: I have an idea for fundraising for our D-Star network.  Every Amateur who calls or writes and says we (Amateur Radio) should use the Internet instead of Amateur Radio for backup disaster communications and inter-site linking I charge $1 via PayPal.   If a served agency calls and says they have no possible other way to reach critical data in an emergency I'm OK with providing access to them- but as a routine matter using D-Star for normal ISP Services is on the list of prohibited communications under FCC Part 97.113:. 

(5) Communications, on a regular basis, which could reasonably be furnished alternatively through other radio services.

And there is the tired argument that 30 and 40 year old technology- like 1200 bps packet-  is "all we need"- is interesting in the face of the evacuation of almost one million people from the LA /San Diego fires today. 

http://www.latimes.com/business/printedition/la-fi-cell24oct24,1,68147.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-business

News: 10/21/07:  Max has identified the uplink /DNAT issue with FTP.  He was missing some kernel modules.  This was overlooked during the rush to get the machines built and installed. 

News: 10/19/07: We are looking for signal reports on our Minneapolis South node, which seems under the weather. 

News: 10/12/07: We are getting some mail.  So far in the last two weeks some folks wrote from Sacramento, who are trying to do some modern stuff and getting taken to task for not using packet.  That sounds familiar somehow.  The South Carolina National Guard was next, and then some folks from Virginia working on some aspect of the Republican National Convention.  I want to get a list out of who works on what on our team here so you can go to the right person directly. 

News 10/7/07: It worked!  We operated Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon/TC10 Net Two (Mile 19-22.5) on one of our three new L-Band D-Star-DD repeaters in Downtown Minneapolis to the database server at the finish line in Downtown St. Paul all day today, helping get medical aid to and tracking the locations of several hundred runners who needed medical attention.  More than 16,000 runners were in our database, and there were hundreds of thousands of spectators.   We had hot, challenging weather.  We had 140 licensed volunteers and ran seven voice nets as well as the data system.  Most of the load was on our three main on-course radio nets today, led by Mike, K0BUD, John, N0YR and Bill, N0QHP.   

The Chicago Marathon was today, and in even warmer temperatures had to halt their race after four hours.   Based on reliable sources they ran out of community medical resources- i.e. rigs for hospital transport.  The MTCM is the 8th largest marathon in the USA, and the argument that D-Star is "unproven" in large scale, multi agency planned mass casualty events is now incorrect.  Thanks everyone!!

MTCM Family Medical Information Tent 10/7/2007- six laptops running on 802.11b to our database at the race finish line fed by packet and D-Star DD Mode via our four new L-Band  repeaters.  More than a dozen computers were required to run the medical system- more than can be supported via packet radio, but easy for D-Star.   Pat, KB0OLI,(l) runs the tent.  Note the Yellow Shirts are Hams, the other operators are community medical volunteers.  The use of unlicensed 802.11b allows the integration of available staff into emergency operations. 

KD8GBL was the "Maytag Repairman" today in the data trailer- no troubles were reported on the data system.  Note the ID-1 repeater database uplink transmitter on top of the database server.  145.67 packet radio and TNC is to the right, and 802.11b access point to the upper left. 

A hot day for a road race 10/7/07

News: 10/6/07: A special thanks to Barry Altman who spent most of today testing our system.  At about 5:30PM, after the last route statement was added by KD8GBL  to our production server (with Max on the phone) he reported success.  He could go up to the repeater from 10 miles away in Minneapolis, and down to the remote database server in our trailer at the finish line in front of the State Capitol in St. Paul.   So the notion of the ad-hoc deployment of Amateur Radio assets- users and servers- under D-Star DD repeaters allowing the use of easy to use web applications comes true.  We'll let you know how it works in production after we care for 15,000 Marathon and 10 Mile runners about 3PM tomorrow :-)

News: 10/4/07:  So far for the Marathon, we can report that both the Mining ARC and Minneapolis East D-Star DD repeaters are full scale with no packet loss at the finish line in the exact spot where the MARA radio/database server trailer will go from a mobile Comet antenna on my vehicle hatchback.   The spot for the Hennepin County Van is full scale into Minneapolis East, so we are ready to go.  The South Repeater was not reachable from either site and may have issues.    Dual "Have you Tested Your RF Paths rather than Rely on Luck" awards go to Greg Kitchak, who did some testing a few weeks back and warned me about the issue with South, and to Dan Skripka, who had me do some testing this evening..  One more repeater as a backup would not hurt.  If you have ever wondered why we install data repeaters in threes (the 145.67 packet network is this way) to cover a given area when we are making commitments to people now you know. 

News: 10/3/07: Minneapolis Downtown East is up.  1251.000 /DD 172.16.2.1 /24 the web site is on 172.16.2.20 /24.  This one is at a 33 story downtown rooftop.  The range looks great.  I get one bar (maybe 10% packet loss on beam that was aimed only roughly) on my radio in Shoreview.  Many thanks to a large team who helped here, esp Dan Skripka and Doug Reed who sponsored the system.  We are expecting one more system to go in this week.. 

News: 10/2/07: We will be installing our newest  ID-RP1VS   + Linux controller at a certain Downtown Minneapolis site @30 stories.  This has provided some clarity on our plans- as the Marathon is Sunday.  Dan is making progress on our other Downtown site, and we are asking Erik (the other one) to loan us his machine for that site.  The idea there is we would have also 440 voice/data in addition to 1.2 DD mode.   Note a &quo