On Sep 5, 2007, at 7:17 PM, Bob Dengler wrote: > FWIW, the control op didn't need to be physically at the IRLP node > in order > to control it, but rather present at a CONTROL POINT. This means > one could > control their IRLP node via a radio control link (not common but > possible), > or (more likely) via the internet from another location. I don't know > about Echolink, but for IRLP I can control our club's node from any > place I > can run an SSH client.
Understood. How many simplex node owners did you hear out driving around talking through their nodes with no mobile data or other means of controlling that simplex node? Come on. I know the rules. I also know at least 99% of those nodes are not under a control operator's CONTROL when they were being used. Many of the people we assisted getting the Linux OS loaded from the customized CD for IRLP didn't even know what SSH was, and wouldn't still today, if asked... unless they joined the mailing list(s) and learned it later, after using the nodes for some time. During that phase in the rules, I always had a "blurb" I sent to new node owners who shared that they were VHF simplex, explaining the situation and politely asking them (ESPECIALLY in the early days, when some countries still didn't even allow Internet linking and were watching the U.S. Hams carefully to see "how it was going", not to embarrass the rest of us by running something blatantly illegal. I'd say 1 out of 5 hams sent that note responded positively with something like, "Hey, I never thought of that. I'll fire up a 220/ UHF/whatever radio instead! Thanks!". The attitude was one of "we don't give a ****". No matter whether they'd figured out the Control Point loop-hole, or not. Most simply didn't care what Part 97 said... and still don't. The only saving grace was that most of these "micro-nodes" also were put up by folks who thought a 1/4 antenna in the basement "worked great". Although we did have international complaints from simplex operators in Canada who were being interfered with my IRLP nodes in the U.S. on simplex that were left connected to Reflectors 24/7 with no one monitoring them. Those e-mails were touchy... "Dear sir, IRLP as a whole is not responsible for the irresponsible actions of a single Amateur in your area. Please endeavor to copy the callsign of the Amateur station in question and see if you can contact them directly. If they've provided contact information for their node, it will be listed on the http://status.irlp.net web pages, but this is not mandatory information that we require." And then of course, we'd find out that MOST of those nodes also had no CW or other ID's active of any kind... yet another basic rules violation... I liked the thought of 2m IRLP simplex nodes for their simplicity, etc... but over time as a volunteer answering complaint e-mail, I came to really dislike the reality of simplex nodes on 2m, and I'm a huge IRLP fan and proponent, volunteer, etc. The thought vs. reality thing... bites every time. To keep this on-topic, an IRLP node (or EchoLink for that matter) with TCP/IP all the way to the repeater site, and hooked to a port on a multi-port controller, is a wonderful thing. Virtually impossible to screw up the audio, etc... and it sounds flawless. When the experimental "RAW" CODEC at 64 Kb/s plus overhead was tested for a while (before being pulled back due to some strange driver bugs in Linux audio on certain types of sound cards), a couple of nodes set up properly easily sounded like the person on the other end was a local. Even the 32Kb/s ADPCM CODEC gets real close -- you can hear the faintest artifacts in the silent portions of the transmissions, if you listen hard. To keep us REALLY on-topic... I hear that a couple of groups have experimented with feeding voters from nailed up IRLP links (they hacked on the code and took out the software that makes an IRLP node a member of the network at large, and just use them point-to-point), and while I was skeptical because each "receiver site" would be slightly out of timing with the others, because of the different latency numbers on each Internet path, the groups doing the experimentation say it works pretty well. Nifty way to do voted receiver sites, if it really does work as well as they say it does. (For anyone reading along, don't ask how to make an IRLP node into a point-to-point link... I won't help anyone with that, since IRLP doesn't officially support that type of node... it's not hard to figure out, but it's not my place to share info on it, either... sorry. Read the code, it's possible.) -- Nate Duehr, WY0X [EMAIL PROTECTED]
