I’m pleased to say the St. Louis Metro ARES/RACES BBS (STLBBS:N0ARS-1) continues to receive upgraded capabilities and is functioning well with increased usage. As of Feb 1, there are 10 registered users of the BBS. And I’m seeing regular connects from the folks out in Franklin County. UNMAIL and UNMO seem to be working great with connections thru MSTL.
The packet radio supplement to the Digital Operations Manual for St. Louis Metro ARES/RACES can be found here.
RMS is available on two VHF frequencies now via N0MTH-10. This allows for those that have acccess to MSTL to digi thru and connect if needed on 145.070. The 145.050 works great around South County during some drive around testing yesterday on 10W from the car.
N0MTH is operating as a Digital Relay Station (NTSD DRS) within the NTS organization. The link between N0MTH-10 and the NTSD Central Area MBO is working great and processing all NTSD messages for zip codes within Saint Louis City and County.
There are regularly scheduled downtime’s in the link because messages are being pulled off the traffic net on the other end. The sync occurs every three hours.
Winmor testing is going well. I don’t know if I will keep this capability up and running full-time. It’s been a good test, but I plan to do a Pactor 3/4 upgrade later this summer.
I had great experiences with FLDIGI/BPQ32 on 17m running BPSK250/1500 from my parent’s location in Cedar Rapids, Iowa using the mobile setup in the car back to the house here. Both end points in the link were running as nodes. So it could be expanded on the other end to provide a long distance HF/VHF link. The flexibility with this setup could be something to consider if the need for NVIS HF or a regional hop is needed. FLARQ also worked much better than anticipated for point-to-point communications.
SETTING UP OUTPOST PACKET MESSAGE MANAGER FOR USE WITH STLBBS
If you have any problems or questions about the setup, feel free to get a hold of me via the BBS or email.