After what seemed like an eternity, the DR-2X Repeater is finally here. Yaesu apparently lost the paperwork and it required some reminding. But, alas, the new repeater is here and the old one goes back this week. Meanwhile, “Old Faithful”, our Icom UHF Repeater continues to be rock solid.
JARA members, and they know who they are :-), will assemble the afternoon of April 8th to swap out the Icom with the new Yaesu repeater and begin the testing. We will operate the Fusion (C4FM) repeater in Automatic Mode Select (AMS) for the next several months. AMS means that whatever mode you use to access the repeater (analog, digital narrow (data or voice), or wide digital voice), that’s that the repeater will output.
If you do not have a Fusion-capable radio, your analog UHF equipment will work exactly the same with this repeater as it did before. We’ll continue to hold Sunday evening analog nets at 7:00 pm, but will begin using digital at 7:15 pm so we can start getting familiar with how the repeater operates in digital modes.
The new repeater comes with a LAN connection which will allow us to connect into other repeater “rooms” such as the rooms to which the Olathe and Overland Park repeaters are connected. We will also have a remote command channel which will allow us to make room changes or other configuration changes on the fly without having to be physically at the site.
This is a very exciting time for JARA. I hope you will be as pleased with the progress as we are.