Hi, my Name is
Steve M1ERS and I would like to tell you all about the Sheffield D-Star
Project. I first became aware of D-Star back in 2004/5 on a
trip to the USA. The Lads over there have a large linked Repeater
Network, and were in the initial stages of playing with D-Star. It looked
good and the audio was so intelligible,
but at that time we as UKRadio amateurs had no available frequencies on
which to set up a
D-Star Repeater. We therefore had to sit back and wait.
On my return I was Talking to
John at Icom, and he told me they had obtained NOV's for two test
repeaters utilising D*star. They were however still waiting to receive
the final go from Ofcom.
John and Don at Icom UK were finally able to
put on air
GB7IC in 2008 and so all was looking good. The time then came for us to get started
in Sheffield, so a group of 5 Amateurs here in Sheffield purchased the
initial 2 Metre D-Star
repeater plus controller. We installed it on 14-03-08 and
since that time we have had an operational 2m repeater on
145.7375 Mhz. We also invested in a new Dell Poweredge T105 server to run the Gateway
utilising the new G2 software.
Trevor M0TWS & I started to install the
Centos operating system on the Dell
Server. After this was all installed we then had to
set a new Class A Network which required a new router to run along side the
existing Linksys Router, and of course nothing went to plan. Here we
encountered a slight problem, as my PC was unable to burn the install
CD's from the ISO distribution we had downloaded earlier. To save time three of us
were all trying to download
the software, and in the end we finished up eventually getting the six ISO discs from M0ADS John.
So back to the plot, we finished loading the
server with the Centos OS, plus the Icom G2 software. Hurrah! However
not without the odd problem or two.
As usual another bug was found in the G2
software, so that was passed on to Darren G7LWT, of the UK-IT and he
thankfully sorted that
out for us .
We then realised, owing to the way that the
repeater has to see the 10.0.0.0. gateway address specified by our Icom Japanese counterparts,
that our normal routing of 192.168.1.1 didn't work, hence the search for a very specific
router able to run the Class A network.
Two days later our router came, we put that in
line with the system, at now at last the Icom repeater hardware, as well as
the network cards could see the internet, and more to the point the main D-Star server of K5TIT.
All that was required now was for the American server
admin team to log us on the International server.
Whilst that was being done, Darren and Paul
were able to telnet into GB7SF and able to tweak things, but ended
up coming over to Sheffield, on a very late Friday evening, to finish off
the repeater software settings. It was really just a good excuse to come over
and have a cuppa tea and meet Steve M1ERS in Sheffield!
I thought I was good on the keyboard, but
not so after watching Darren, I think I need to get more practice ! They
were happy
with the tea and broken biscuit's, and I left them to it. They
eventually left to go
back home to Manchester around 0200 in the morning.
We would like to thank them both, and its
always better to meet people face to face, after all the emails etc.
We still needed the American team to
authorise us on the main server, that was like waiting for ever owing to
time differences, but
eventually it happened.
Then GB7SF hit the world Wide D-Star system, the
next problem was to log the users on to our brand new Server. Again another bug
was found in the software, so John GM0OPS helped out on that. He was
keeping the XYL happy on one of his Saturday happy shopping outings, and
couldn't wait to get back home to get stuck into the problem, so many
thanks John for the help. Apologies to his XYL !
