Loose Notes 11/8/15

  Just a few scattered items this week. I've found it hard to drum up activity (for the most part) this week. Local DMR activity is non-existent, and the people that I usually talk to on my brief commute (using analogue FM) haven't been around much. Since actually talking to people is how I obtain most of the information for the blog, it makes it hard to come up with posts. Having said that, let's look at the latest developments: 

• N0YNT (Matt) is back in town! I ran into him yesterday (11/7) on the 444.425+ (114.8 PL) repeater, and we chatted while he unpacked a few boxes. Hopefully, he'll find some time to write here about his West Coast radio adventures and his trip back. Matt is also more focused on his many projects, and his main interest now is in setting up a "turnkey" Raspberry Pi (RPi) box to link repeaters over the internet (SVXLink). The MAGIC repeater network would probably be the biggest target for this effort, but there's potential to link other repeaters in a cross-band scheme, too. 

• Per Matt, the 442.025+ DMR repeater in St. Paul hasn't been connected to the network for a few weeks now. Most people use the 442.425 machine on the East Bank campus, but it was KC0BBK (Galen) who detected the failure of the .025 locally. My impression is that the .025 won't be restored until it's moved to the St. Paul campus, where it should provide very good coverage for the east metro. 

• Speaking of the 444.425+ repeater, activity has picked up sharply there over the past week or so. Activity draws activity, and spontaneous QSO's and even roundtables are happening again. It's not at the level (yet) that it was a year ago, but it is increasing from virtually nothing. 

• Aprs.fi has implemented the new standard icons this week. The new symbols are a lot clearer, and no longer look like something out of the '90s. Take a look and maybe consider updating your APRS icon. 

• Looking at APRS, I notice that AE0RF (Justin) has set up a new I-Gate (AE0RF-10) in downtown Minneapolis. It hasn't been in operation long enough to judge its coverage, but it does reach into St. Paul. Per an uncannily well-timed QSO with Justin, I learned that this arrangement is only temporary, however.

• Yet another I-Gate was added recently, or perhaps I just now noticed it. N0GEF-7 is now gating packets near Annandale, and looks like it has wide coverage. This is an area that has had poor coverage in the past, so we can certainly use some redundancy to fill in the gaps in the west metro.

•  In southern MN, KG0QR-1 looks as if it's sticking around, too. This is an area that has several strong digipeaters, but weak gateway capacity. KG0QR-1 is a gateway operating out of Minnesota Lake, MN (about 13 miles north of I-90) that is fed by the digipeaters in Mankato and Owatonna, as well as handling local traffic. So often these gateways pop up for a few days and then disappear. This one has stayed around for a few weeks now, and the MN amateur community benefits from the redundancy of coverage this gateway provides. Now if we could only get something in Alexandria to cover I-94... 

• The new Chinese SSB satellites are having difficulties, apparently. XW-2A, B, C, and D are only operating as beacons, and XW-2E hasn't been heard for days. Only XW-2F is currently operating as a transponder.