[MarinTeams] Meshtastic

[Mark Vlcek]

Hi all!

I've been off the air and thus not joining the weekly nets for quite some
time. I hope everyone has been well.

I fairly recently started learning more about Meshtastic (
https://meshtastic.org/) and have been communicating with some members of
the Meshtastic Bay Area Group (https://bayme.sh/).

Meshtastic is an open source radio mesh network that operates at ~915 MHz
(in the U.S.) and allows "nodes" (radios) to communicate directly to one
another, or through other nodes connected to the same mesh, e.g. a text
message sent could go Node A --> Node B, or it may go Node A --> Node D -->
Node C --> Node B.

There's a heavy presence of nodes around San Francisco, East Bay, South
Bay, and even Santa Cruz. However, there's unfortunately a relatively small
presence of nodes in the North Bay, and those in the North Bay are largely
cut off from the larger mesh because there is a lack of any strategically
placed repeaters in Marin County or Sonoma County.

I'm curious if there's any way we could get a Meshtastic repeater up with
the help of The Hamilton Wireless Association! I'm happy to help in any way
that I can if this would be a possibility.

I've also reached out to The Marin Amateur Radio Society (MARS) with a
similar query.

Thanks,
Mark
KN6UEX