Category: News

It’s time for us to meet again! Monday, September 9, 2024 @ 7:30 PM.

You have two choices either virtually or in person. As usual we meet in person at UW Space Place at 2300 S. Park Street, Madison. If you are unable to be there in person you can join us virtually. For information on joining the virtual meeting please send an email to president@w9hsy.org and he’ll send you the virtual connection information. If you are a member of MARA you should have already received an email with this information. If not, send the president an email and we’ll get the connection info to you.

We are closing in on the beginning of 2024. Dues have not changed from years past. $24 for the first ham in a household and $12 for each additional ham in a household. For those who would like to pay by credit card we welcome you but we need to assess an additional dollar to help defray transaction fees. For both check and credit card please read the information on our dues page.

We will NOT meet in person this month on September 18, instead we will meet virtually using Zoom starting at 7:30 PM. A new meeting invitation is being sent out, if you do not get the invitation please send a request to kc9unz@arrl.net.

I guess that all we really have to say. We have been joining together for an FM net on the MARA “15” every first Wednesday of the month for a few months. Now it is time to exercise our D-Star repeater. We will have a Net every 3rd Wednesday of the month at 7:15 pm on the MARA D-Star repeater on 145.305. For now it will be local only since we don’t yet have an internet connection at the repeater site but we will be able to test and exercise our D-Star equipment.

The next meeting of the Madison Area Repeater Association will be held on January 9th @ 7:30PM using Zoom. We have nominees for the offices of President, Vice President, Secretary and Treasurer and will be holding elections at the meeting. A link to the meeting will be going out in email soon along with the slate of nominees. Please plan to be there for the election. We will also be discussing the date and forming a group to plan our first Hamfest in three years.

Due to antenna problems in my current apartment I’ve had to suspend my WIRES-X and Echolink experimentation. I’ll be moving to better space later this spring and may be able to resurrect my testing. Thanks to all who tried it out.

We are testing WIRES-X through a Remote Repeater Link on the 147.150 repeater starting on Jan 14. Since Jeff is using his personal FTM-400 the connection may be down from time to time. Until we get a new W9HSY account confirmed through Yaesu the repeater will alternately identify itself as W9HSY or KC9UNZ depending on whether it is the repeater identifying or my FMT-400 identifying. Also currently WIRES-X is operating only in FM mode NOT DIGITAL. It means we can’t experiment with the C4FM side of things yet but anybody with a normal FM hand held or bigger radio can play.

Currently our plan is to allow for experimentation on FM for a few weeks and then switch it out to Digital for a while to get the reactions. The way we are set up it appears until we set up a second remote radio that is set to Digital we are only able to link one mode at a time.

Here are a few things to note:

• Connect to the repeater as you normally would. No special settings are necessary. (i.e. 147.150, PL 123.0, Split 0.6)
• This will only work on FM
• You will need a radio with a Keypad that can transmit DTMF tones when you key the mic.
• Any connection you create will automatically disconnect in 10 minutes. You can always reconnect but we don’t want it to stay connected indefinately. Please remember however to disconnect (DTMF *) when you are done.
• Some commands to remember
  • * – Disconnect
  • #66666 – Connection Status
  • Connecting to a room/node
    • #21080 – America Link
    • #21667 – Wisconsin Link
    • #62086 – If you are travelling and can connect to a WIRES-X repeater use this command to connect back to the Madison Repeater. (This number will change when the New Registration is complete)
• A couple of helpful lists
  • Active WIRES-X nodes: https://www.yaesu.com/jp/en/wires-x/id/active_node.php
  • Active WIRES-X Rooms: https://www.yaesu.com/jp/en/wires-x/id/active_room.php

If you have any questions send them to wires-x@w9hsy.org and we’ll see if we can answer them. And let’s chat about this on our Thursday MARA Net to share our experiences.

If you are looking for the id Numbers for Wires-x groups to connect to you can find them here: https://www.yaesu.com/jp/en/wires-x/id/active_room.php

We are holding the January 2022 MARA Membership Meeting virtually again this month using Zoom. We will meet on January 10 at 7:30 PM. You can connect to the meeting using your computer, your smart phone or your plain old phone.  You should have received an email with the Zoom Connection information, if not please send an email to Treasurer@w9hsy.org with your name and Call Sign and he will send you a copy of the connection information. 

At this meeting we will be presenting the Financials for 2021 as well as the Budget for 2022 and nominations and election of officers for 2022. See you there.