I'm with Vince on a number of points. If there's really a serious emergency, that will benefit from packet radio, chances are that the hobbiest hams are not going to be on the air, unless it's in support of your goals. I think it's far better to have the local community exercising your digipeater for you, so you know if it fails.
If you're truly insistent on having the ability to lock out stations, it'd be better to do a couple of things to achieve that: 1) Use a TNC that allows performing over-the-air settings modifications 2) When an event happens, and you determine that the level of emcomm traffic vs. regular user traffic requires it, set up a beacon that frequently (every minute or two) informs all users that the digipeater has been configured for emcomm operations, and create a buddy list of stations that are allowed to connect and digipeat via the digipeater, and implement it. Another alternative that can be done remotely is to change the "MYDIGI" setting to respond to something else, but that's only a short-term fix, since anyone that's monitoring can see the digipeater callsign. Perhaps the most important thing, is if the operation is of a limited period, remember to set operations back to normal operations before shutting operations down, or when the emcomm traffic volume is reduced enough to support normal operations. >From a technical perspective, using CTCSS as an operational modifier is a poor solution, for the reason Vince mentioned, and additionally, depending on the TNC and radio combination, having the the CTCSS tone present at the input to the TNC may cause it to make more reception errors than if it's not present. Also, anything that delays the digipeater (especially) from being able to tell that the channel is busy, and that to wait for the channel to clear before transmitting, is going to kill performance and require many more retries than leaving the digipeater open. Hope that helps! 73, Bob, KD7NM -----Original Message----- From: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com [mailto:digitalra...@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Terry Breitenfeldt Sent: Sunday, February 22, 2009 11:37 PM To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Subject: [digitalradio] Using CTSS on a digipeater? If I wanted to setup a "closed" Digipreater on 145.09 Mhz on a high mountain peak, so that I could limit activity to only ECOM traffic, would the use of a CTSS tone decode be a viable option? Would a CTSS tone interfere with Packet operations? ------------------------------------ Announce your digital presence via our Interactive Sked Page at http://www.obriensweb.com/sked Recommended software: Winwarbler, FLDIGI, DM780, or Multipsk Yahoo! Groups Links
