We’ve updated this for Hurricane Milton and have it streaming in 4k from 500 fee up in downtown Tampa.

As mentioned on the mailing list here we have a planned outage today at the main Tampa site will take HamWAN and our Tampa Repeaters offline until about 6-7 pm tonight.

Our Tampa GMRS Repeater on 462.575 has been updated with a separate voting receiver on the 467.725 D546 / NAC575 channel. This will run in parallel with the existing 467.575 receiver. Previously the single receiver in the repeater would scan, but this is not as quick as having two receivers. It was also possible that strong on channel interference would cause it to dwell on non-active channels. This would mean the first second of a transmission would be clipped.

We’ve fixed this by adding an additional Astro-Tac receiver which will vote for the strongest signal and use it. As part of this receiver pre-amp was reconfigured and we should expect 6 dB more gain in the receiver path. This should greatly enhance the performance of handhelds using this site.

We encourage all people to use the alternate input if your radio support it.

The NXDN and Analog/P25 repeaters in St Pete are back online.

Both have been repaired and in the case of the NXDN, power has been increased from 17 watts to 36 watts to the antenna. St Pete is a unique site with three repeaters on the same antenna, meaning there is a combiner and duplexer with receiver filter. The down side is losing 4.5 dB on the NXDN frequency and 3.9 dB on the 444.375 P25/Analog repeater frequency.

FSG has been promoting HamWAN and it’s use for connecting parts of Tampa bay over our amateur microwave frequencies. In keeping with this, there’s been a need to connect mutiple remote sites, where there is internet, but outside the coverage area of HamWAN wireless. The soultion to this is a VPN and we’ve come up with a “turnkey” soultion supporting the following:

• Cheap (100-200 of equipment)
• IPv4 and IPv6 routed subnet
• Transparent routing over the underlay network (people shouldn’t be able to tell it’s a VPN)
• Traverse NAT, even NAT 4444
• Mutiple switch ports with Power Over Ethernet (PoE) as an option
• Integrate to the existing HamWAN network, and optionally provide redundancy to wireless
• Scale to gig+ speed
• Allow others who have their own IP space to announce it via HamWAN Tampa

Details can be found here https://wiki.w9cr.net/index.php/HamWAN_Remote_Site and if you want to get involved, hit us up on #hamwan on slack or on the mailing list

FSG members will be attending Hamcation 2022 this Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Feb 11-13 at the Central Florida Fairgounds. We’ll be setup outside and have a tent area. We invite everyone to stop by and check it out.

We’ll generally be monitoring 443.525 FM 146.2 PL tone, but have setup a special Slack channel #hamcation-2022. If you don’t have slack, please install the app and sign up using this link.

Hamcation Info

https://www.hamcation.com/
Location, Date & Time
Central Florida Fairgrounds and Expo Park
4603 West Colonial Drive
Orlando, Florida 32808

February 11, 2022 | 9AM to 5PM
February 12, 2022 | 9AM to 5PM
February 13, 2022 | 9AM to 2PM

Due to almost constant interference on the 467.525 input, we’ve set the repeater to 467.725 DPL 546 input only for the time being.

Due to a great gnashing of teeth over this, we’re rolling this change back. Scanning receiver is re-enabled and we’ll be looking at other options on how to deal with the ships on 467.575.

FSG and Tampabay HamWAN will have a booth at this fest inside the main hall.
Stop by and hang out in our “VIP” area.

The hamfest is at the Strawberry Festival venue in Plant City, FL.
303 BerryFest Place, Plant City, FL 33563

Hours are 1300-1800 Friday and 0800-1600 Saturday. That said, by noon
Saturday it’s all over.

Hamfest website:
https://fgcarc.org/general-information/