Posted by dross on Wednesday 4th August 2010. 1966 Views.
Last Updated Thursday 23rd February 2012.

The packet radio BBS is shut down and an APRS digipeater installed in it's place.

On Friday 25th June 2010, John VK5NI and myself climbed to level five of the Elizabeth water tower to install the APRS digipeater.

The new digi-peater is an MFJ branded TNC2 clone running UI-DIGI, driving an FM900 and connected to the old Packet BBS 2M antenna which is located approximately half way up the wind-up tower on top of the water tower. The digipeater is installed into the same cabinet as the wireless network router, which allows us to access the TNC via the router serial port if required.

We had originally planned to re-use the Midland radio that had been running the Packet BBS system, but due to difficulties in re-programming, it was decided to utilise a spare FM900. The TNC and radio were donated by Paul VK5VCO, who also did the bulk of the work to build the digipeater. Thank you Paul for helping get this project finished off.

Early indications of the coverage area appear excellent, with solid coverage from the CBD around to Port Adelaide and across and up to Gawler and down to Golden Grove. There are also patches of coverage all the way out to Kapunda and as far south as Noarlunga.

A map of the coverage area is shown in the following map. To see the current state of the map, visit http://aprs.fi/heard/VK5RLZ-1. Note that the data for this map is reset each calendar month, so you can get a better idea of the coverage late in the month rather than earlier.

In short, this is a tremendous expansion of the APRS network in Adelaide, and a system that EARC members can be proud of.