Yesterday morning Bill W7NY was in the air and much of the flight was to test out distance coverage using the Baldi VHF repeater. (this new video is available below)
Bill flies out of the Tacoma Narrows (TIW) airport in his Piper Cherokee (P28A, N7428R) made it down toward Longview (yesterday 3-27-22) and determined that 2 slot DMR was effective to about 88 miles from an altitude of 2500 feet plus into Baldi V. Those are soft figures though at this point. But another flight is being planned to further test 2 slot operation and more so, at least single slot DMR simplex. Stay tuned for more on this next flight if you are interested in simplex and distancing of DMR communications. Take a look at the video (below) even if you are not interested in testing.
Here’s a bit of background on Bill’s operation:
- flightaware.com/live/flight/N7428R / Yesterday’s Flight via Flightaware
- www.youtube.com/channel/UCxiNd35PETTOL_K-XUGTBLg // Bill’s Youtube channel with ham contact flights
- aprs.fi/#!call=W7NY* // Not actively recently but may be part of trip soon, Flightaware provides much better information
- The ham radio is an Anytone 878 HT on a belly mounted VHF spike and intercom audio providing superb ham and flight audios
- These flights are recorded with 2 HQ cameras (cockpit and wing), with audio and the videos are well edited
More details will be announced soon but for simplex testing we would like to have folks from Salem to Vancouver BC be onboard for testing. 2 slot DMR at distance has timing issues and we want to pin down though practical limits when using 2 slot DMR. But also this trip will be testing single slot DMR which has no slot syncing/timing issues and already others have done 125 miles LOS on a 2 watt HT. We would hope to have a number of 40 watt base stations involved for this flight to test for the extreme practical limits. Even if you have only an HT, please join in on this hunt.
So be prepared, if possible with a radio zone that has (PNW V2) 145.51 simplex, color code 1, slotless, talkgroup ID 99, Washington 1 and PNW Regional on any repeater for the testing. The repeater TG’s will be used for basic comm and announcements to coordinate the simplex testing.
If you wish to actively participate, please make an effort to log your details so you can send them in for an overall evaluation of this experiment. Using Callwatch would be helpful for the on-repeater testing. But also logging Bill’s locations as it affects your ability to hear him on simplex. Bill provides much data, so pen and paper would be helpful. If you wish to join us, please comment below or send an Email to me so that we can better plan this coming flight.
Bill’s Latest Video from 3-27-22 Flight
Views: 493
I hope that I’m on the air when Bill does the next testing from ‘N7428R’. Fun note (for me): on Bill’s return leg of this trip I had a short qso with him as he was northbound over Olympia. A few minutes later I spotted his plane a few miles north of Lacey, as he was closing in on Tacoma Narrows. I just happened to be driving easterly when he was approx. 4 mile east of me. I pulled over and checked flightradar24.com to see if the aircraft I was looking at was Bill, and sure enough it was. He had just announced that he was going qrt as he was north of Lacey and had to focus on the approach and landing.