Welcome to the group W2PAN-
1st. have to apologize as my mailbox had over 120 emails because of my vacationing this past week in a secret bunker advising our local medical teams. A new members 1st post must be approved to prevent drive by sniping.
2nd. A bit has happened since you last were involved with W?VFW and our repeaters. our 440 machine 443.325 PL162.2 is now on K-Link (Kansas Link) .? I believe there are bout 12-18 repeaters linked 24x7 to give us statewide coverage. It is expressly dedicated to SKYWARN and they have priority at any time weather issues are present anywhere in the state. Now for our VHF repeater 145.27 PL103.5. -That repeater was dormant for 2-3-4 years, hardly used. Since I retired and was disappointed in it's operation, I decided to take over it's care. It is still a work in progress because There are a number of nets this weekend and I need to pull the repeater one more time and make a mod to the controller board and change the interface cable to reflect that mod. It will eliminate the occasional squelch tail noise we have when someone in the neighborhood turns on what we believe is a plasma TV. Before the cootie invasion, the noise would run for an hour at 7am and 5pm.. watching the news we surmised. Now that the cooties took over, everyone is home and it's on for hours.
Now since I took over the Repeater we spent hours working on the repeater, duplexer, the networking at the VFW and the computer that runs it all.? We even hired an Australian Girl -"Shelia" to identify the repeater every 10 minutes. ? We have placed the repeater on "The ALLSTAR network" which is a leap forward over Echolink. It uses CD quality full Duplex audio, Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP). Unlike DMR which is a commercial Digital protocol, ALLSTAR can be adapted to AM- FM- SSB- DMR- D-star - P25- Fusion as it's just plain audio when it's on the internet. It's up to you to to decide how to access ALLSTAR. You can use a radio, a computer, a smart phone or even a landline and dial up a 800 number. There are 14000+ nones and a node can be a hotspot or a repeater or a entire state network. In theory, we could link all 14,000+ nodes together..
But we are straying from the W?VFW repeater... when we got ALLSTAR going I had it linked to a blind buddies repeater in Rochester, NY - a city about the size of Wichita. But we had problems and I broke the connection. We have a number of Visually inconvenienced Hams so we started to connect to the BLIND HAMS TALK GROUP ALLSTAR #50631.. They have nets on various days. So it's possible to listen to hams from all over the USA, Canada, I have heard, France, Germany and Switzerland plus New Zealand..
So you know the only thing I can play is the JukeBox. But we have had Christian prayer nets, Blind Hams, just general Ham radio and a music net, that comes from being connected to the Blind Hams Talk Group.. We hope someday to involve PTSD Veterans with their own node.... Heck with the cooties thing everyone will be PTSD- OCD- and just plain crazy.
Final thing - Since you've been away 10 years..kind of think of this as turning up the volume...
146.52 - every evening local rag chew? (also 146.42, 146.55, 146.58 to a lesser degree) Plus all the repeaters
146.94 - local new $$$ repeater - Best coverage in town but set your radio to narrow band.. or back off the mike.
443.325 - State wide? K-LINK
146.82 -? (KAN-OKLA) Kansas -OKLAHOMA Link
145.27 - Mainly North America -but World wide...Blind Hams Talk Group...
Larry W8LM
Larry Macionski