© Copyright 2003
Emergency Minnesota Amateur Radio Disaster Data Network
Home | News | D-Star MN Network | Marathon & Events | 145.67 Packet | Software & Tutorials | Links | Contact
Home | News | D-Star MN Network | Marathon & Events | 145.67 Packet | Software & Tutorials | Links | Contact
design: tronicmedia.nl
General Notes
We provide 90kbps highly reliable
FCC Part 97
noncommercial emergency data capability for Amateur
Radio Operators in our
area. The idea is we can set up mobile databases
and mobile users anywhere, and routinely support large
scale volunteer public service work (mostly medical) using modern
web applications. Most of the served agency
command centers and mobile units in our area are set up for our
network. We do not worry about the Internet being
down, restricted or under attack. In Egypt
recently the Internet was shut down for 5 days, and the
Chinese Military recently admitted to having a Cyber
Warfare Department.
Our primary emergency services backbone supports the JARL D-Star open standards. Our systems use the Icom 1.2 Ghz DD mode (~90 kbps simplex) on L-Band. We have four "repeaters/nodes" up of ours, a spare on-air and one more here for Washington County that is in final test. There are two more DD mode machines in the area. We allow any to any and one to many connectivity between Icom ID-1 data radios using DNAT. The idea is any location in our area can reach at least two of our systems. Our equipment is installed in secure, locked commercial sites (average is 350' HAAT) and is open to general Part 97/Amateur use.
We have a separate 440 digital voice/data repeater on the Icom USROOT server courtesy of Icom America (KC0WLB B) and plan to use that to support the Hospital Compact and National Disaster Medical Services. We are fascinated by the gateway software. If you remember it is the Internet and each site can be easily attacked and brought down remotely at any time you are ok. Internet linking is cool but does not solve the "what if the Internet is under attack" problem in any way.
The central core D-Star data nodes (i.e. MPLS-E and STPONE) will likely never be linked or on the Internet. The current thinking in emergency communications circles is the major threat to communications is Cyber Warfare. If your systems are linked, and on the Internet, you get to participate in Cyber Warfare.
High speed amateur radio data is here, and legacy analog /FM/ packet/ NVIS /PACTOR radio technology won't support data rates much about 9600 bps reliably. All of our served agencies expect us to be able to support modern, easy to use web based applications. All new equipment we buy for Amateur Radio use will be D-Star capable. We announced the retirement of AX.25 support for new applications several years ago.
TWINSLAN, a local group who provides a lot of support, is building a linked, Part 97 5 GHz area wide network using mesh /HSMM. Mesh is very cool by the way.
Our primary emergency services backbone supports the JARL D-Star open standards. Our systems use the Icom 1.2 Ghz DD mode (~90 kbps simplex) on L-Band. We have four "repeaters/nodes" up of ours, a spare on-air and one more here for Washington County that is in final test. There are two more DD mode machines in the area. We allow any to any and one to many connectivity between Icom ID-1 data radios using DNAT. The idea is any location in our area can reach at least two of our systems. Our equipment is installed in secure, locked commercial sites (average is 350' HAAT) and is open to general Part 97/Amateur use.
We have a separate 440 digital voice/data repeater on the Icom USROOT server courtesy of Icom America (KC0WLB B) and plan to use that to support the Hospital Compact and National Disaster Medical Services. We are fascinated by the gateway software. If you remember it is the Internet and each site can be easily attacked and brought down remotely at any time you are ok. Internet linking is cool but does not solve the "what if the Internet is under attack" problem in any way.
The central core D-Star data nodes (i.e. MPLS-E and STPONE) will likely never be linked or on the Internet. The current thinking in emergency communications circles is the major threat to communications is Cyber Warfare. If your systems are linked, and on the Internet, you get to participate in Cyber Warfare.
High speed amateur radio data is here, and legacy analog /FM/ packet/ NVIS /PACTOR radio technology won't support data rates much about 9600 bps reliably. All of our served agencies expect us to be able to support modern, easy to use web based applications. All new equipment we buy for Amateur Radio use will be D-Star capable. We announced the retirement of AX.25 support for new applications several years ago.
TWINSLAN, a local group who provides a lot of support, is building a linked, Part 97 5 GHz area wide network using mesh /HSMM. Mesh is very cool by the way.
D-Star News
2/18/12: All the new repeaters
are here. The Duluth system went to Alan and they
have a site (600') and callsign identified. The
Little Falls machine is under test. We have a site
underway for Fargo. Our next sites look like
Pequot Lakes, Rush City and possibly Medina.
1/31/12: Repeaters are arriving for Little Falls, Fargo and Duluth. Our next phase looks like Twin Cities-St Cloud, (Monticello), Twin Cities- Duluth (Rush City) and Twin Cities- Rochester (Hampton). And what about Mankato? Big issue- who pays for DSL...
1/22/12: Alan added three more systems to USROOT this week. 145.11 has excellent coverage, and the same from 1283.300 for ID-1 owners. Icom will provide a machine for Little Falls next. We are announcing a statewide buildout.
1/15/12: OK we're operational on KC0WLB on USROOT. We have two RF decks- 440DV 444.425 and 1.2 DV 1285.500, dual Internet feeds and emergency power. This should hold us for the winter. The gateway registration site is:
https://kc0wlb.dstargateway.org/
1/6/12: Doug Reed, N0NAS tuned us up another duplexer, and we moved the 440 system KC0WLB to K0LAV's 120 foot tower in Gem Lake. This will give us Ramsey County /Metro coverage for the winter. A better site and more systems are on the way. Anoka is reported to be close to having their gateway fixed.
12/28/11: Our old four can duplexer was not happy- we are still planning a site move to K0LAV's place- the DSL is installed. The 440 D-Star repeaters are yes two mobile radios inside and have wide front ends and you need real duplexers with notches. Cheap mobile duplexers designed for tube radios with helical front ends are a no. It's at 120 feet- good Ramsey County coverage.
12/16/11: Our repeater, KC0WLB B is up on the gateway and USROOT. I had a nice QSO with Bill, W9JLR near Hayward WI on one of the reflectors.
12/10/11: You have not lived until you have installed the Icom 2.X Gateway Software. It took me 16 hours and you must look in about five places to put together a set of directions.
11/23/11: Icom America has put us in charge of getting a linked repeater up on the USROOT server ASAP in the Twin Cities. We still don't have one for a variety of reasons- but there are requests out from the group in Rochester. Actually the NDMS folks and Hospital Compact can use it.
9/12/11: Max is looking at the failed STPONE thin client. The file system was corrupted along with the motherboard issue. Thin clients need good power- routers load the OS into RAM and do not have open file systems on disk usually) but a normal Linux system might have file systems open on disk/flash that could get corrupted after regular (like weekly) power hits.
9/10/11: Those famous Icom Ethernet F-F RJ-45 connectors that ship with ID-1s have a pin that does not make contact. Toss them and get new ones.
9/5/11: Our older generation of Neoware Thin Clients behind our D-Star repeaters have been failing. So far, the two we most need for the Marathon are both offline. The repeaters are all fine. So we might try using three repeaters at the same time and running three separate ID-1 > RP-1D uplinks out the data trailer. We have been resisting calls to take out redundancy in this system. In the real world, you need to plan on 35-40% of your assets being out of serivce at any one time. As our network is unlinked, no single failure can take it all out.
8/24/11: Note if you are using repeaters and ID-1s: For some reason the callsigns are case and character position sensitive. And a reminder you can use DNAT on the ethernet behind your repeater (a Cisco(r) router can do this as well) and support one to many and many to many ID-1 connections.
8/23/11: We were amused to read of the struggles of the accepted standard Amateur Radio solution (proprietary Pactor III/HF/NVIS to handle real world data rates even for email in the current (Sept.) issue of QST. This problem was solved five years ago and is in routine production use at two of the largest public service events in the world. We are handling usable data rates for web applications.
1/31/12: Repeaters are arriving for Little Falls, Fargo and Duluth. Our next phase looks like Twin Cities-St Cloud, (Monticello), Twin Cities- Duluth (Rush City) and Twin Cities- Rochester (Hampton). And what about Mankato? Big issue- who pays for DSL...
1/22/12: Alan added three more systems to USROOT this week. 145.11 has excellent coverage, and the same from 1283.300 for ID-1 owners. Icom will provide a machine for Little Falls next. We are announcing a statewide buildout.
1/15/12: OK we're operational on KC0WLB on USROOT. We have two RF decks- 440DV 444.425 and 1.2 DV 1285.500, dual Internet feeds and emergency power. This should hold us for the winter. The gateway registration site is:
https://kc0wlb.dstargateway.org/
1/6/12: Doug Reed, N0NAS tuned us up another duplexer, and we moved the 440 system KC0WLB to K0LAV's 120 foot tower in Gem Lake. This will give us Ramsey County /Metro coverage for the winter. A better site and more systems are on the way. Anoka is reported to be close to having their gateway fixed.
12/28/11: Our old four can duplexer was not happy- we are still planning a site move to K0LAV's place- the DSL is installed. The 440 D-Star repeaters are yes two mobile radios inside and have wide front ends and you need real duplexers with notches. Cheap mobile duplexers designed for tube radios with helical front ends are a no. It's at 120 feet- good Ramsey County coverage.
12/16/11: Our repeater, KC0WLB B is up on the gateway and USROOT. I had a nice QSO with Bill, W9JLR near Hayward WI on one of the reflectors.
12/10/11: You have not lived until you have installed the Icom 2.X Gateway Software. It took me 16 hours and you must look in about five places to put together a set of directions.
11/23/11: Icom America has put us in charge of getting a linked repeater up on the USROOT server ASAP in the Twin Cities. We still don't have one for a variety of reasons- but there are requests out from the group in Rochester. Actually the NDMS folks and Hospital Compact can use it.
9/12/11: Max is looking at the failed STPONE thin client. The file system was corrupted along with the motherboard issue. Thin clients need good power- routers load the OS into RAM and do not have open file systems on disk usually) but a normal Linux system might have file systems open on disk/flash that could get corrupted after regular (like weekly) power hits.
9/10/11: Those famous Icom Ethernet F-F RJ-45 connectors that ship with ID-1s have a pin that does not make contact. Toss them and get new ones.
9/5/11: Our older generation of Neoware Thin Clients behind our D-Star repeaters have been failing. So far, the two we most need for the Marathon are both offline. The repeaters are all fine. So we might try using three repeaters at the same time and running three separate ID-1 > RP-1D uplinks out the data trailer. We have been resisting calls to take out redundancy in this system. In the real world, you need to plan on 35-40% of your assets being out of serivce at any one time. As our network is unlinked, no single failure can take it all out.
8/24/11: Note if you are using repeaters and ID-1s: For some reason the callsigns are case and character position sensitive. And a reminder you can use DNAT on the ethernet behind your repeater (a Cisco(r) router can do this as well) and support one to many and many to many ID-1 connections.
8/23/11: We were amused to read of the struggles of the accepted standard Amateur Radio solution (proprietary Pactor III/HF/NVIS to handle real world data rates even for email in the current (Sept.) issue of QST. This problem was solved five years ago and is in routine production use at two of the largest public service events in the world. We are handling usable data rates for web applications.
