We’ve updated this for Hurricane Milton and have it streaming in 4k from 500 fee up in downtown Tampa.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Planned Outage Today
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.
Tampa GMRS Update
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.
St Pete NXDN and P25/Analog Online
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.
HamWAN remote
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
Orlando Hamcation 2022
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
462.575 GMRS Update
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.
Tampa Bay Hamfest Dec 10 and 11
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/
WD4SCD 147.030 Repeater Remote Receiver
FSG believes in cooperation and assisting other amateurs where we can. In 2019 Richard Pomeroy in cooperation with Pinellas County ACS approached FSG about locating a remote receiver at our St Petersburg location for the WD4SCD 147.030 MHz repeater. After some thought FSG agreed to provide the antenna, radios, interface hardware, computer and Internet link required for this cause. Our first iteration (an AllStar RTCM) didn’t work for WD4SCD, and we ended up with a dedicated windows server running echo-link.
It’s online most of the time, but we do not actively manage it; the WD4SCD repeater admins take care of connecting/disconnecting it. This can be accessed on a 147.030/147.630 with a 100.0 Hz PL tone. Extra Low power on most HT’s from St Pete will be full quieting into this site. As this site is at 380′, it’s one of the highest amateur repeaters in Pinellas County. This is yet another valuable service running over the Tampa Bay HamWAN.
This has been in operation since August 2019, or just about two years at the time of this writing.
Site Hardware
The hardware FSG has dedicated to this is simple, only a Motorola CDM radio, commercial gain 148-158 MHz antenna, 1/2″ heliax, a signal link interface and a server PC running Windows.
VHF Antenna 
WD4SCD Receiver Install at FSG 
St Pete Ham Rack 
Receiver In Testing
FSG Board Nominations Open
As it’s that time of year again, we have elections open for the board.
If you’re a member of FSG you may run for any of the positions open:
President
Vice-President
Secretary
Treasurer
Regular Board Member
If you want to nominate anyone please do so via email to the secretary of FSG
jesse@flscg.org
Our members meeting is tentatively scheduled for the 18th of September, but
COVID-19 may change that. As the bylaws require nominations to close out 30 days
prior to the members meeting, this means all nominations must be received by
the 19th of August.