Episode 15.11: The Jakub Glas Special (Patreon)

Hello world, is this frequency in use?

Timeslot 1

This is Jakub Glas, LI2ZN, net control station for the Friday the 9th of March KEEPERNET.

The check-in process is a little different from when I last facilitated, our numbers have grown so much in recent years!
It's grand to see!

So, with the new procedure, we'll start with Svalbard keepers, then follow the sun to:

• Tromsø,

• Thule,

• Utqiaġvik,

• Samoylov,

• And finish up with our friends in Baranova.

Before we start, may I say what a pleasure it is to be back operating again, the last few years have been extremely hard for me, as I will explain later.

Svalbard Keepers, check in now, please.
LI2ZN for the net: 73 and monitoring.

Timeslot 2

LI2ZN for KEEPERNET:

Thank you Nia, great to hear about your proposed updates to the Relay protocol, I'll make the changes to the Northern Relay on my side, and we'll monitor throughput.

Before I get to my update, I acknowledge a message from
LC9DN to Sofia Brobakk in Thule.
LC9DN: Please stand by.
Routing station OX4Q, can you accept the message?

Excellent, LC9DN and OX4Q, move to simplex channel #9 and pass the message, keep in mind it will be logged.

I promised I'd tell those who are out of the loop my story, so here it is.
I was the Pyramiden Repeater Keeper, 5 years ago.

This may come as a surprise to some newer members of our community, as there is no repeater serving Pyramiden, we have to use nearby Longyearbyen or Barentsburg.

Well, there used to be one.
Until the storm.

My repeater grew organically, as often happens.
The first component that could be recognised as part of the eventual repeater was a simple voice logger I set up to monitor our Pyramiden local net frequency.
Occasionally, I'd be out fishing with my friends, and we'd miss an important message.
So I built and programmed the little logger out of a shortwave receiver with a few scavenged flash memory chips - just enough for an hour or so of low-bitrate mono audio.

Now I had my own answerphone!
It was a joy to come back home and see the pulsing red LED and catch up with all the interesting stories around town.

Those same flash memory chips I eventually used in my first store-and-forward simplex repeater, used by some friends when we were fishing out in the Adventfjorden.
We used it to get messages back home, when out of range of our personal handheld radios.
(I mostly used it to check on the radio systems that I, more and more, considered my little digital family, growing in number, back in my home)

It worked so well, thanks mostly to location:
I built my house high in the hills around town, as many in this group have, too, I understand!

Choosing where we live is a delicate compromise between easy access to the scrap trade of the town, and the clear air of the hills.

We're stuck between two worlds, as Keepers:
One foot in the urban valleys, and one in the wild moor.

Eventually, other folks asked if they could use me and my buddy's little fishing repeater.
I said, "of course, the more, the merrier"!

And in just a few months of use, it was obvious that it needed an upgrade for more capacity.

A week of downtime, working all hours, and I laid the foundations for what would eventually become a fully operational node of the Novamediterran 50 MHz repeater network, with:

• Multiple input and output frequencies for simultaneous real-time conversations over SSB, and

• Store-and-forward digital messaging, encoded principally in AX.25 packets and other digital modes, though I included an optional Morse mode, for manual operation.

Being a Keeper is a job for life, but it also BECAME My life.

There was constantly work to do, improvements to be made, all by the blinking lights of the system that had spilled over into every room of my home.
I no longer needed to burn wood over the long winters - kilowatts of radio transmission generate a lot of heat!

You can't always choose when to start a family, people say.
It seems to be the same with a Repeater!

It was a happy few years, not without day-to-day challenges, of course, but very happy.

Until the storm swept through and destroyed everything I'd worked for.

I'll pass back to the net now, I'll tell you about the Relay next round.

LI2ZN for the KEEPERNET.

Timeslot 3

LI2ZN: LC9DN your message has been delivered, I hope the weather is good for the wedding.

Many folks have asked about the operation of the Relay.
While I'm happy to provide the details, I would gently suggest that you should have listened to Nia when she tried to tell us last month.

The Relay protocol works on the same principle as the pre-collapse ALE system: Automatic Link Establishment.
If you've not studied your radio history, I will explain, and as usual, what is old, is new again:

Most often, in the pre-collapse military, ALE allowed your radio, by cooperating with others on the ALE network, by gauging the quality of shifting atmospheric conditions for best communication.

When not talking on the network, the radio periodically tests all the different frequencies that are available to them using a technique called "sounding".
Sounding is achieved by all the radios that are on, but not in use, sending periodic messages with enormous amounts of redundant error-correction information encoded, hardly any of the message is the actual message!

This allows the rest of the stations on the network to calculate the quality of the link between them and the transmitting node, by how much of the error correction data was needed to recover the original message.
If none, then the link is said to be at 100%, if half, then 50%, and so on.

This also lets you see the last time a radio was heard, like a "who's online" list.

To call another station, you would enter their number into your radio, and it would automatically negotiate the best frequency between you and them using this clever, simple method.
Where the link quality data between you and your recipient was too old, another sounding sweep would happen before your call was connected, usually taking a minute or two.

The Relay takes this idea to an extreme.

The Relay network, is really 2 ALE networks, one connecting Northern to Equatorial, the other, Southern to Equatorial.

The main difference to pre-Collapse ALE, is the range of frequencies used:
The old ALE networks usually operated on one or two HF bands, for practical reasons, antenna design making multi-band a challenge, especially in a mobile environment.

But the Relay operates on all bands, and due to the Relay site's size, multiple simultaneous bands can be used at the same time.

I understand that Keeper Daphne Pike is taking the first shift as Equatorial Keeper.
Daphne, thank you.
When you're relieved and have returned home refreshed, walk up to the Relay site above Pyramiden, drop in and say hi, I'll even share with you a wee dram, I've been saving some for a special occasion!

Timeslot 4

Unless I hear different, this is LI2ZN final for the KEEPERNET.

I'd been told that some stations can't hear the updates from Utqiaġvik, please tune to repeater channel #6 after the net and I will repeat them to you from my notes.
Alternatively, they will be in the minutes on the Hamisphere forum in the usual place.
Don't know how to use Nia's forum? Now is the perfect time to learn!

That storm wasn't a storm.
Not in the normal way of it, with high winds, rain, and waves.
A few of you know the story already, but as I take up the mantle of Keeper of the Northern Relay, I'd like to be honest with you all.

The storm was real, but it only affected me.

The world got... too loud, too busy, too much.
So one day I just stopped.

Stopped joining the KEEPERNET, stopped maintaining my beloved repeater, stopped fishing with friends.

The packet network modem needed updating, which was just... too much to do, so I turned it off, then the transceivers broke one by one, and when the last failed, that was it.

My house grew cold.

It has taken me 5 years to emerge from the depths of those dark times, but I am back.
Thanks to friends, and support from the community, both in Pyramiden and on the network, I'm back!

I considered being involved with the radio community again, but I couldn't quite start.

But last month I heard Nia's signal, and it didn't sound like anyone else was going to help her, so I finally broke through.

And I will show you, and perhaps more importantly, show myself, that I can be trusted with responsibility again.
I'm honoured to receive the support that I have done, I won't let you down again.
Community is everything.

It's dangerous being alone.

This is LI2ZN closing down today's KEEPERNET.

Thank you all, batteries & bars, going clear.