Notes from Monday Night FreeDMR Net 20th March 2023
Facilitated by the Brisbane Amateur Radio Club A successful net was help Monday 20th March 2023 0900 UTC. Once again Les, VK4LEZ did a great job as net Controller.
Click on [FreeDMR] for the FreeDMR Pages.
We have a New Facebook page 505 FreeDMR thanks to Glenn VK4DU. Sign in now at
https://www.facebook.com/groups/882328379695708 and Glenn will welcome you aboard.
This page is dedicated to FreeDMR in Australia and great place to exchange information as wel as your thoughts and ideas.
This group is designed to bring together all Australian radio amateurs who are interested in the FreeDMR network.
Why 505? 505 is the DMR country code for Australia and also is the number of the main Australian FreeDMR talk group.
Much more content is in the way.
Fine tuning adjustments are being made to the interface to Motorola repeaters on the FreeDMR network.
Interesting net.(I was Watching the dashboards. Thanks for the links Glenn)
Collision.
NSP & PK had been trying to join the net from time to time earlier.
When NSP was first called in by LEZ(Net control) , PK also replied a
second or 2 later (RF into RDB). NSP hit the server first.
While both were talking NSP was relayed to air by my hotspot & also by RBA
However RDB was relaying PK (PK was RF into RDB) directly.
NSP stopped talking first and the last bit of PK was heard on hotspot & RBA.
The report you both heard from Lez way or may not have made sense as he
would have heard you both in bits & pieces. Is this consistent with your experience?
VK4PK: Yes it was. I was woundering why I could not hear Les at the beginning.
In essence what you hear depends on where you are.
Call In Procedures
Others have called in from time to time & been missed. This happens on
other nets too. This is understandable given the latency of digital networks.
It is generally overcome by the net controller insisting that stations
wishing to join a net in progress do not call randomly in any preceived
gap in transmissions.
To assure no one is left out the net controller announces (during the
net) that there will be times later when any further stations can call in.
Usually this happens after 5 or 6 overs so no one is out in the cold for
too long. (Some may give up if ignored too long).
Ths is done on the VKDMR net on tuesday night & works very well. Most of
the Quadnet nets run this way too.
Cheers,
Bruce VK4EHT
Shaun VK4NSP has requested you keep a log of issue on FreeDMR along with time of day and the access method eg hotspot or Repeater name. They can be poster on the 505-FreeDMR facebook Page.
I didn't receive any audio when Lin VK4VVK entered the net last night and same on the second round,
zero audio. I heard everyone else, and Net controller heard me. Can someone please enlighten me if
that is a simple setup problem? and, is it associated with the bad distortion I have to all the audio
I receive with missing words and phrases during overs. I was direct through the repeater using a Retevis
with external antenna.
VK4PK: I Don't know the answer to that without some more test, but you were user activating TG5050 on TS2 when the RBA repeater has
TG5050 static on TS1. This should work but we need to update your CP to the latest one. Commendable
that you are using a repeater and especially the club one.
There are many choices of Dskboards with FreeDMR. Each server has its own dashboards and then any MMDVM Repeater will have a PI-Star Dashboard. So there are basically two types of Dashboards, FreeDMR Servers type and the Pi-Star type. They are quite different in the way they present data. As to which is best is a matter of private opinion. I am currently using the FreeDMR-Australia Server so I have one sceen open on this and I am transmitting via the VK4RBA Repeater so I have it's Pi-Star Dashboard open on a second screen. For more details see: Dashboards Explained
REMEMBER that FreeDMR has many servers to choose from (three in Australia) and each may be configured slightly differently. Each Repeater or Hotspot can connect to any of these servers world wide, can also be configured differently. Try to be aware of these differences. For example, FreeDMR allows you to configure Talk Groups as you see fit. (Where you have administration rights. For example, your hotspot.) There is no matrix to say what TG's are allowed or to specify a time slot.
In common usage kerchunk definition is, "with a sudden heavy blow or thump". (Wiktionary)
For amateur's in general the term kerchunk means to key up the repeater to see if it is there.
For amateur's in the digital world is means to open a User Activated repeater to gain service.
It just takes a few seconds on Push-to-Talk (PTT) button on the transceiver to
user activate most repeaters, resulting in a kerchunk sound.
Then the successive Push-to-Talk's will allow communication to occur until the
timer expires which is configured on the repeater or the hotspot
you are accessing. This is usually 10 to 15 minutes.