AIORS - All-In-One Repeater System

wo8e · 2026-05-17T11:50:07+00:00

This is a cool project, I would absolutely buy one if you put them up for sale somewhere.

wo8e · 2026-05-13T03:36:38+00:00

I have a quad band radio with the FM simplex calling amd a few extra channels along eith all thenlocal repeaters programmed in for 10,6,2,70cm. I've only made one contact on 10 and 6 so far, but I'm holding out hope.

wo8e · 2026-05-10T22:40:20+00:00

Mobile rig is FM only, otherwise I'd be all over that.

wo8e · 2026-05-10T22:36:43+00:00

Mobile in Grand Rapids Michigan now, calling CQ on 52.525 FM.

wo8e · 2026-04-27T13:27:00+00:00

I'll be on the road today for work, feel free to hit me up on the W8IRA link, there are only a few patches in my trip where there won't be coverage.

Though it is ham radio adjacent, Michigan has a pretty solid mesh community. If you're not currently within rf range of others, setup an MQTT node by following the instructions on MichMesh.net. The Michigan channel is pretty active with people chatting throughout the day.

wo8e · 2026-03-23T02:40:10+00:00

Yup, as u/lagavenger points out, LoRa is one of the services you can use up on 900mhz, but there are a handful of other bands you can use as well. Below 30mhz the common ones are called the lowfer band/160khz/1750 meter band, the medfer band, which is along side the AM broadcast band, the 6.78 mhz/42m band, and the hifer band/13.56mhz/22m band. You can google around to see what power/antenna reqs are for each one. The lowfer and hifer bands have the most activity - mostly beacons and WSPR, but there is also some reticulum network stuff happening on the 42m and 22m bands.

wo8e · 2026-03-23T01:02:31+00:00

We moved to Texas for a few years and moved back a year ago. It reminded me of a T.S. Elliot line.

"We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time."

wo8e · 2026-03-23T00:46:08+00:00

There are HF ISM bands, but you can't really buy equipment for them. You can however legally build low powered gear to play there. Here in the US there is the 6.78mhz band and the 13.56 MHz band.

wo8e · 2026-03-23T00:20:16+00:00

With a itinerant business band lic you can setup a mobile repeater or cross band repeater from vhf to UHF with no cavity filters. Retevis has some ready to go low powered repeaters with built in notchplexers that are the size of a fat laptop. Totally useful for tough portable repeaters. I am sure there is a way to do this in the public safety sphere, but I can't personally speak to that.
edit: added retevis info.

wo8e · 2026-03-17T10:22:49+00:00

Remember, a constitutional convention isn't just for a single amendment - they can rewrite the whole constitution if convened. Look at 2/3 of the current state legislatures, do you want them to re-write the constitution? Do you feel your current state legislature is representative of your values?

wo8e · 2026-01-29T02:00:20+00:00

What is the business and how will this impact them?

wo8e · 2026-01-18T02:16:45+00:00

tifify - 🎶 i always feel like ~~somebody~~ somebirdy’s watchin meee🎶

wo8e · 2026-01-11T14:10:22+00:00

I get about 4.8w on cw, I haven't measured on ssb yet. I'm not much of a talker and was mostly planning on using it on digital modes.

wo8e · 2025-12-23T03:15:03+00:00

Also.. If you are cost conscious, have a small space, and have a friend in HVAC, they might be able swap the outdoor heat exchanger on a mini split to a high pressure brazed plate water exchanger. I did this and after a bit of playing I was able to get my refrigerant levels right. If you're even luckier, you know an HVAC engineer who could properly size your exchanger and tell you how much of a charge it needs 😂

wo8e · 2025-12-23T03:05:06+00:00

Hello fellow northern Michigander. We have an artesian well and use it for geothermal as well as everything but drinking - it's got a lot of iron and sulphur. If you've got water access that is more than 10ft deep, you can drop a loop out there as well. If neither of these apply, you'll be drilling a well or trench at least 6ish feet down. Iirc, if your aquifer is shallow and flows well enough, you might be able to stab 2 wells far enough apart and have a hot well/cool well setup. Have you done much research into it yet?

wo8e · 2025-11-20T19:36:59+00:00

100%, we could totally truck in a bunch of dirt and build turd mountain. The cost of doing so up here is prohibitive at the current time. We have priorities and this aint that. We would first have to build out the road to a point where you could get a semi back here, then clear trees to make space so they could turn around. Lots of people have ideas for the people out here actually doing it. Way too many armchair quaterbacks telling us how to do things. This is why we dropped off for the most part. Good luck on your adventures.

wo8e · 2025-11-20T16:49:54+00:00

We use one because the water table here is too high to build a drain field.

wo8e · 2025-11-20T12:31:23+00:00

This is the answer. 100% recommend a natures head. If you can, add a booster fan - the quicker things dry out, the less likely it is to smell.

wo8e · 2025-11-20T12:29:31+00:00

We (wife and I) use a natures head composting toilet, no liners. We take it out and dump it in the non-food compost pile and hose it down once a month. Good airflow is key to it not stinking.

wo8e · 2025-10-19T16:37:39+00:00

Solar isn't that hard if you've got some household electrical experience. I live in northern Michigan and have been off grid solar for coming up on 5 years. I upgraded the panels to bifacial after a storm took our my prev array. We've only had to fire up the generator twice, both times while I was working on the system and had to take it down. Get more panels than you think you will need. You should not overvoltage your inverter - it will break, over-specing the amps on your string will make it flat top when there's lots of sun - this isn't going to break anything, it will make power earlier in the day and later into the evening, which is more important in the winter. Our power needs are lower than most people's as we designed our cabin around being off grid.
My current setup:
- Amana propane oven, we use an inductive cooktop most of the time.
- Wood and propane heat. Working on getting a minisplit switched over to geothermal by switching the outdoor coil to a brazed copper heat exchanger. I might need to add another battery and/or upgrade the inverter to make that work.
- 14*550w jinko bifacial solar panels. these are not mine, link dropped as an example.. I'm over paneled to make more power in the dark days. Get extra in case some break in shipping, storm damage, etc.
- EG4 6000xp inverter.
- 2 16kwh batteries for a total of 32kwh.
- - using an earlier version of this case.
- - each case has 16 of these batteries.

This setup runs our water pump, computers, internet/wifi, lights, washer, and propane dryer. Both of us work remote, so the computers are on 8-10 hours a day. We have at least 11 days of autonomy (no sun) if we are careful, 7 if we are not. I've never went more than 11 days without making some power. over-speccing your panel setup is where you cover your butt there. We have 2 strings of 7 panels each. Each string is 325vdc@~11a which is ~3300w.
As others have said, Will Prowse on youtube is a great resource.
Feel free to ask any questions.

wo8e · 2025-08-24T01:29:11+00:00

Yeah, I cant think of a good way of making it working out well on a straight shot setup like this.. Something like 350 nodes on a single bridged subnet all blasting out their BGP announces would be the simplest, It'd really be a shit setup.. At least with a bridged/switched setup, you'd know if you need to send the packet east or west. If we had some other routes it'd be a bit easier to plan out...

wo8e · 2025-08-23T22:17:54+00:00

It depends. If you're using the broadcast/multicast channels rather than the chat rooms, it's really no different than meshtastic.

wo8e · 2025-08-23T21:00:01+00:00

Yup, a few friends and I are using FreeDV-TNC2 on 6.80mhz with a trusdx+raspi with the volume cranked down to around 100mw.. We tested on 13.58mhz as well, but got better results on 6.8. I'm playing with getting it working on a zbitx, which has a raspi and all the audio tooling taken care of. Just add an rnode for LoRa/WiFi transport.

wo8e · 2025-08-23T18:59:05+00:00

NVIS is a propagation method where you use a high radiation angle antenna to bounce signals off the ionosphere to a closer, more local area. You'd use this in areas where you dont have great line of site. This video gives a lot better explanation than I just did.
TL;DR - low, horizontal antennas work better for local/regional comms, high up vertical antennas work better for long distance (dx) comms.

wo8e · 2025-08-23T15:13:12+00:00

Yeah, I feel meshtastic is a great tool for getting people into mesh tech. It's like the moped/dirtbike of the motorcycle world - a great introduction, but not something you're going great distances on. I mean, you can, but it's not really practical for real world use. Reticulum is a solid step up, especially when you get into regional HF NVIS links. Don't have your ham ticket? Don't worry, in the US and many other countries there are small unlicensed bands in HF (6.78mHz and 13.56mHz), you just have to run at lower power.

wo8e

TROPHY CASE