Digipeater

I’ve build a Digipeater. These are my notes.

Equpment

Using DigiPi, Digirig, and a handheld I had not used.

DigiPi runs on RaspberryPi. I’m using a Pi4 with a Geekworm for Raspberry Pi UPS - X729 for grater uptime and 12 Volt support.

DigiPi is a great progject developed my Craiger (KM6LYM. This project is using version 1.8.1. You can plug it into your radio’s USB interface, use a radio interface like DigiRig, or use a sound card with your radio in VOX mode, to run many digital modes.

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Notes on JS8Call

My best friend KX0U invited me to JS8Call. This is my project to get there. OH, and thanks Jim!

Equpment

Starting from the computer end, I’m using [Dragon OS] (https://sourceforge.net/p/dragonos-focal/wiki/OriginStory/). More on it latter.

The computer is connected to a Xiegu DE19 interface. I tried using a DigiRig with much frustration. More on that latter.

The Radio is a Xiegu G90 controled by flrig. JS8Call is connected to flrig.

My antenna varies between DX-Comander virtical and # QRPGuys Portable No Tune End Fed Half Wave Antenna.

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Going DMR

Not your father’s radio!

I’ve started with a couple of new radios for this round of Ham Radio projects.

A Radioddity G90 and their GD-88. As a fan of SDR, I’m using digital modes with both. FT8 on the G90 and DMR on the GD-88. I love the way FT8 cuts through the noise when signal are low.

But I can’t yet say I’m a fan of DMR. It seems like a radio build by a government committee that didn’t know anything about it. Oh… because it was. The process needed to get your DMR radio working is very technical and bureaucratic.

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RepeaterBoot.com

If you need to program your HT for a local area, look no feather than RepeterBook.com.

After creating an account, you can build a list of repeaters based on your location and export it to many common file formats, including Chirp and CSV.

W5TSU

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AM broadcast band filter

For the W5TSU.net:8030 receiver I build a broadcast band filter. This should front end overload and intermod created by these stations and allow for better Ham band receiption. I also wanted to learn how to build my own coils.

I found a design at the vk3il blog. This filter was modeled with the ELSIE (free version). It is a 7-pole Chebychev filter with cutoff frequencies of 1.7MHz.

Scmatic

I started by winding some coils from 22, 26 and 30 awg magnet wire. I use a MingHe model LC100-A meter to masure these coils. I found holding the coils with my fingers didn’t make a sizeable different in the coil. What did make a difference was how tight the coile was wound and the lingth of the wire used. The size of the winding did make some difference but not as much as the amount of wire and how stable the winds where.

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