I've had an echolink node up & running on and off for 21 years now on different bands
Its activity comes & goes, decided I'd try allstar & hopefully it yield better results for QSO's
To do this frugally is only about $150
So I acquired all the pieces: raspberry pi2, ARS usb adapter & baofeng 888
I won’t go into detail over how to setup one up since there's ton of info already on the web about that
Since the pi2 & usb adapter have no shielding I decided to make a coffee can node LOL, to see if shielding is really needed
As such I added some ventilation holes & a dc muffin fan for more air flow
I've since ditched this idea & moved the node onto the home theater rack where it gets no RFI from the computer & is closer to the cable modem for direct connection, so keep that in mind
For the radio end of things I added on an RG174 adapter to LMR240 to a ¼ wave ground plane antenna up 20'
Running 1.5 watts on low power to keep the duty cycle down yields me roughly 1.5 miles in VT’s rolling topography
Been connected to different nodes around the country & world
Got an email stating my allstar node is now published in NERDS aka New England repeater directory
Hopefully I’ll catch you on the bands via allstar, 73
info on Allstar can be found here ~ allstarlink.org
online active node list ~ http://stats.allstarlink.org/
Its activity comes & goes, decided I'd try allstar & hopefully it yield better results for QSO's
To do this frugally is only about $150
So I acquired all the pieces: raspberry pi2, ARS usb adapter & baofeng 888
I won’t go into detail over how to setup one up since there's ton of info already on the web about that
Since the pi2 & usb adapter have no shielding I decided to make a coffee can node LOL, to see if shielding is really needed
As such I added some ventilation holes & a dc muffin fan for more air flow
I've since ditched this idea & moved the node onto the home theater rack where it gets no RFI from the computer & is closer to the cable modem for direct connection, so keep that in mind
For the radio end of things I added on an RG174 adapter to LMR240 to a ¼ wave ground plane antenna up 20'
Running 1.5 watts on low power to keep the duty cycle down yields me roughly 1.5 miles in VT’s rolling topography
Been connected to different nodes around the country & world
Got an email stating my allstar node is now published in NERDS aka New England repeater directory
Hopefully I’ll catch you on the bands via allstar, 73
info on Allstar can be found here ~ allstarlink.org
online active node list ~ http://stats.allstarlink.org/
