Annual Christmas Party Set for 12/19

The Rusk County Amateur Radio Club's annual Christmas party is being planned for mid-December. The club has made reservations at Sal's Italian Restaurant for December 19, 2019 at 7:00 p.m. Members, spouses, children and other guests are all invited!

This meeting will take the place of our regular monthly club meeting. So mark you calendar and join us for a festive holiday dinner!

New Repeater Report added to website

We've added a new feature to the RCARC website to help us keep tabs on our repeaters. Frequently, when we discover a repeater is down or a digipeater is not working, someone will say, "Yeah, I tried it two weeks ago and it was doing that." The fact is, it can't be fixed if we don't know it's broken.

So now, if you have an issue with a repeater such as you notice interference getting into the machine or a digipeater is not responding, simply go to the RuskCountyARC.com web page, find the link to the Repeater Report and log your report. Then an alert will be sent to the repeater trustees and they can begin to diagnose the problem!

A link to the Repeater Report form is located on the left side of the website just below the list of repeaters in the area. We've also added a "Status" indicator next to each repeater or node. The indicator is a small, red or green circle to show whether the repeater is operational or not. Is the status is ● then the repeater is up. If is ● then the repeater is down. We will try to keep the status indicators as current as possible.

Find your way to a "Digi" today!

Since a lot of us are tinkering around with WinLink and Packet Radio now, this list from the ETECS.org website.  It gives a pretty good list of the local Gateways and Digi-peters in and around East Texas. Click on the image for a larger version.

To use a Digipeater with Winlink Express, simply choose the "Digipeater" option when selecting a station in the packet radio session. Then, enter the dipeater callsign and SSID (the nubers as the end) in the box showing "via." One example is connecting to N9JN-10 via W5ETX-3. In other words, your signal will "hop" from your station to the W5ETX-3 and then hop again to N9JN-10.

If you imaging your are on one side of a creek and the Winlink node is on the other, then it's kind of like hopping on a rock to get across a river. You can hop on several digipeaters, but remember, each hop takes time and the more you add, the slower your connection will be.

Some digipeaters have mailboxes attached to them (think 1980s computer BBS systems). You can leave messages and check for mail to you. They are not connected to the internet, so the messages will not forward to another system.