[RVRC] D-Star Hot Spot at WJ3P in Hopewell

[John Pugh]

Here in Mercer County, we’re located between two D-Star systems - NJ2DG in Martinsville, and K3PDR in suburban Philadelphia.  Neither provides coverage for me at home, so I’ve installed a hot spot at my house in Hopewell Borough.  It’s a simplex node on 145.700; no settings are required in RPT1 or RPT2, and the UR can be CQCQCQ.  The software is ircDDB and Dstar Repeater, both by Jonathan Naylor G4KLX, running on a Raspberry Pi computer.  The radio interface is a GMSK board from MoenComm.  The node's normal state is NOT LINKED, so my little FT-1500 doesn’t burn up when things get busy.  Local users are free to connect to the reflector of your choice, and it will disconnect after 5 minutes of inactivity.

Remember, it’s SIMPLEX, so one user at a time (unless you are within direct range of your friend and you want to share it!).  Also, the antenna is a Diamond X50A at rooftop on my house and the output power is set fairly low, so range is limited to only a few miles.  If you key it up, even in the unlinked state, it should return a beep so you know you can proceed with linking.

Here are some DTMF commands you can use:
0 = check link status
# = disconnect from link

D-Plus Reflectors (list at http://www.dstarinfo.com/reflectors.aspx <http://www.dstarinfo.com/reflectors.aspx>):
Syntax is *[REF] [Module]
So to connect to Reflector 20A, the same one as the NJ2DG module B repeater uses, you would enter *20A

DCS Reflectors (info at http://xreflector.net/neu3/ <http://xreflector.net/neu3/>):
Syntax is D [REF] [Module]
So to connect to DCS 006 B, you would enter D6B.

Since DTMF keypads have only the letters A,B,C,D (or perhaps none at all) you can convert letters into numbers using the table below.  
So in our previous example for REF 20 A, you would enter *2001 if necessary.

A= 01	J=10	S=19
B= 02	K=11	T=20
C= 03	L=12	U=21
D= 04	M=13	V=22
E= 05	N=14	W=23
F= 06	O=15	X=24
G= 07	P=16	Y=25
H= 08	Q=17	Z=26
I= 09	R=18	

If you have the opportunity to give it a try, let me know what you think and where you’ve connected from.

73, John
—
John Pugh 
WJ3P     Hopewell, NJ
WJ3P/1  Pemaquid Point, ME
wj3p at arrl.net