Author Archives: kd4efm

Kenwood Info

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When adding a Kenwood repeater to the network… 2 things are required.

a) you MUST turn off the Over the Air Alias on both the repeater and any users radios.  If you don’t, there is a better than 50% chance that NO icom radio will hear your call which can be pretty frustrating when you’re on a WW linked system.

b) your repeater MUST run Very Narrow on the Digital side.  Icom does not support 12.5khz digital, only 6.25 and so the 2 systems are not compatible unless they both are set for 6.25khz… this is a Kenwood repeater setting btw.

Tallahassee, FL now online!

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Ok, so it’s probably time that I created some form of table of who’s what, where :)…

We just brought up a new Kenwood site today on VHF and Norm in Tallahassee will be adding a UHF site to that a bit later.

Current list of linked systems, frequencies and RAN codes.

  • I – Atlanta, GA – 442.025+, RAN 1
  • I – Atlanta, GA – 443.050+, RAN 1
  • I – Cleveland, OH – 444.45625+, RAN 1
  • I – Tampa, FL – 444.425+, RAN 1
  • I – New Port Richey, FL – 442.7625+, RAN 1
  • I – South Lansing, MI – 443.250+, RAN 5
  • I – Toronto, ONT – 443.050+, RAN 1
  • I – Taunton, MA – 145.280-, RAN 1
  • I – Swansea, MA – 145.320-, RAN 1
  • I – Pinckney, MI – 146.500 +1.000mhz, RAN 47
  • I – Seattle, WA – ?? (coming online soon)
  • K – Venice, FL – 444.100+, RAN 1
  • K – Orlando, FL – 442.0375+, RAN 1
  • K – Lakeland, FL – 146.655-, RAN 1
  • K – Bristol, CT – 449.975-, RAN 1
  • K – Bristol, CT – 145.220-, RAN 1 (off net until further notice)
  • K – Johnson City, TX
  • K – Greensboro, FL – 147.390+, RAN 1
  • K – Tallahassee, FL – 444.175+, RAN 1
  • K – Milwaukee, WI – 444.750+, RAN 1
  • K – Ankara, Turkey – 145.775-, RAN 1
  • K – Vancouver, BC
  • K – Searcy, AR – 146.655-, RAN 1
  • K – Searcy, AR – 444.500+, RAN 1

Yet another *FIRST*!

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This morning we conducted a little test.  A Kenwood Repeater, connected to a 4G Wireless router, all external IP addresses are private and will not accept incoming port forward requests.

We successfully connected the Kenwood to the WW NXDN network and carried on a conversation. :).

Stealth IP now works on the Kenwood NXREF…. yeah, no more VPN, no more static IP address, no more 15 IP limit.  I think we’ve now shattered all the barriers …

Alan

Added Turkey – Yes, the Country

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Today we brought up a club in Turkey onto the WW NXDN network.  This proved that we can do Kenwoods without a VPN, and it proved that we can make them work over multiple hops.  I still think there is a gremlin or two to be worked out but Say Hi to The gang from Turkey.

Hi Alan,

Thank you very much for your great effort. I think we did :-))

I’m attaching the photos  again. You can use them on your blog

(nxdninfo.com ) if you want.

The names and callsigns:

from left to right

Cengiz. TB2BBG.

Cemal TA2AW

Serhat TA2ANK

Serdar TA3AS

Tahir TA2T

Our Club name is ANTRAK.

I’ll always remember your help and your friendship.

Best Regards,

Serdar

 

The guys from Turkey

Seems I always forget one detail :)

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For those that are looking to join in the fun.

We’re trying to allow for keeping local traffic local and net traffic on the net.  In order to do that I’ve built a way to filter on Talk Group (Kenwood calls this Group ID).  If you have TG 65000 programmed in your HT or Mobile and you key up, you will go out over the net side, if you have any other TG selected, you will stay local to your repeater.  The opposite is true as well.  The net won’t invade your local QSO until the NXREF sees no activity for a programmable amount of time, then it will allow net traffic back on the repeater.  You can force this to happen immediately if the NXREF see’s the 65000 TG transmitted.

Also to better separate us out.  For now we are all on RAN 1.  I can translate RAN’s on the Icom side, I can’t yet on the Kenwood side.

So bottom line,

To get on the net, takes RAN 1, TG 65000, any other RAN or TG and you’ll just be talking on your local repeater.

 

Another First – Maybe soon!

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Today I loaded the Kenwood version of the NXREF on a Raspberry Pi in TURKEY – yes, the country Turkey.

If all goes well, on Wednesday, we hope to put Turkey on the WW NXDN net.  TA3AS and a club in Turkey have their NXR-710/810 repeater equipped and ready.  We’ll be conducting final testing on Wednesday.

Firsts:

  • First test of Static IP address to private address for Kenwood
  • First NON-VPN connected Kenwood to the WW NXDN net
  • First test of a public Kenwood NXDN reflector
  • First intercontinental Link up (we’ve already done the first transcontinental and first international version of same).

Stay tuned, Wednesday could be an interesting day for Amateur Radio NXDN!

I couldn’t leave well enough alone

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Once we put the analog bridge inplace, we immediately knew that we needed a better solution.  It was functional, but the audio going through a D to A and A to D phase didn’t sound that good.

I started looking at the features that the Kenwood could support and poof, found that they had an RF LINK mode.  This allowed me to put the NXR-810 in that mode as a user radio on a Icom Repeater.  I had to shorten the tails to 0 on both and I had to play with the priority of PTT on the Kenwood, but in the end, it allowed me to create a true digital to digital bridge.

Life is good!  And now we have the Icom network and the Kenwood networks bridged, this will give us some breathing room so we can focus on other features for the Kenwood NXREF.

 

Kenwood to Icom and back – it’s here!!!

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So for now, I’ve cobbled together a Kenwood to Icom and back analog bridge.  It doesn’t sound as good as I’d have liked, but it’s not terrible either.

We’ve also moved all the Kenwood NXDN WW net over to a new NXREF, while it has no features at the moment, it does seem to work.  We’ll watch it for the next few days… I actually hacked out 2 different subtype packets tonight just to see if it causes any issues… We’ll see :)…

Not to lose sight of the *FIRST*.

We have Kenwood NXDN’s talking to ICOM’s and vice a versa over the Internet. 🙂

 

All Icom so far

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For obvious reasons (I started with Icom equipment) the features as mentioned in prior posts all function with Icom repeaters… In fact today we have 2 separate networks, but that is about to change.

Kenwood as we mentioned implemented a totally different protocol to be used over the Internet or Network.  Without specific documentation and equipment to be used in a Lab setting, I was unable to implement the features for Kenwood that I have for Icom.

However, tomorrow I expect to pick up a Kenwood NXR-810 repeater and KTI-3.  Immediately that will bridge the Icom and Kenwood WW NXDN networks and we’ll do that via an Analog Bridge to start with.

Over the past few days I spend some time with the Kenwood guys and have poured over Gigabytes of data from those repeaters trying to determine the protocol and how to use it.  This past weekend I made a major breakthrough and as a result I should have a NXREF up and functioning for them.  This should not require a VPN as their current solution does, and it will not require every repeater to have a specific link to every other repeater.  I should also be able to enable it to work over dynamic IP addresses and even private ones as I have with the Icom version.

The one trade off to this that the Kenwood guys will be required to put a small linux platform somewhere in the private network space.  That platform will be a Local NXREF for them and will handle all the nuances of IP addresses, translation etc.  This platform will also mirror the feature set of the Icom version as they are both built off the same code base.

That’s step 1…. Step 2 will be to work on the actual protocol conversion back and forth and enable the Analog bridge to go away in favor of a true digital bridge.

So have I interested you yet?