*************************************************************************** * ATGP 2018 Report for MT Utwsayantha 75 *************************************************************************** This was my first time participating and I was able to scrounge up a 710 and 72 for use during the event in addition to my ftm350 and I covered Mt Utsayantha in Stamford NY just West of Albany. We were on the air but 9:10 and dispite the location and to my surprise we could only hear Greylock and Equinox direct. As the various links came up and successfully digipeating we ended up copying stations 1-14. We even tried putting the antenna 60' up the fire tower with no improvement in reception over a mag mount on the vehicle. We could only hear Equinox via UHF as well. This 3214 feet apparently was not enough to link to the stations South of us which was quite surprising. I figured we would at least hear Sam's Point. I am looking forward to next year and would be willing to possibly try a new location or find someone real good with heights to set the station and operate it from the Top of the tower and no feedline to the ground. N2YP -------------------------- We did have access into the fire tower but I personally can only make it halfway up due to a unpleasant relationship with heights. We did try placing our antenna up at that height but only had 8x @150' length and it made no improvement on received packets and UHF coms got worse. Access to the building observation tower is possible but is no where near the 60' of the fire tower. One of my helpers did go up to the top with a small yagi and HT and didn't hear anything different on the UHF voice frequency. It was a long shot but we did try. I would be willing to go to sometime with some more equipment and see what we could do via Sam's and the next station south. Voice equipment or non-digipeating would be easier to obtain on this end for testing since I had to borrow the Kenwood's but I have a ftm350AR. To the North Equinox was by far a winner over Graylock In signal strength. As for the discussion about a 9600 backbone I am fairly sure something could be arranged there. The biggest hinderance would be a certified and insured climber to do that work. John Rudolph Amateur Radio Op N2YP Unadilla,NY -------------------------- John - I doubt that you can find a better spot than Utsayantha for propagation or convenience anywhere in the western Catskills. The Village of Stamford owns the fire tower and the wooden observation tower, and I think access can be arranged. The observation tower has AC power. If Sam's Point was hearing you over top of the central Catskills, you should be able to hit Camelback with a directional antenna. A more detailed propagation survey would help. Add 60 ft to Utsayantha's elevation of 3214 ft. If Utsayantha can link with Camelback, as well as the established link to Equinox, we could extend the chain beyond the present end points by skipping Greylock and Sam's Point with some packets. I spent hours in that fire tower sixty plus years ago with the USAF Ground Observer Corps during Saturday exercises. We had a GOC post in the village, but all manned fire towers were also in GOC so I would hike up the mountain on a Saturday and do my thing while enjoying the scenery. Access is through a trap door at the top of the stairway. I doubt that I still have the combination to the lock. By the way, the mountain is name for a legendary Indian princess in a story that was probably fabricated by the hotel proprietors in Stamford about 150 years ago. Gordon Davids / WJ3K MDMTNS-7 in 2018 -------------------------- John - I was operating MDMTNS-7 yesterday 21 July. When I saw your packets from Mt. Utsayantha, I about jumped from my comfortable chair. I was at MDMTNS-7 because we suddenly had a need for some local ops to step up and fill some gaps. My long-term plan had been to go to Stamford (my old home town) and put Utsayantha into the ATGP network. I went on the mountain in May to check propagation and intermod, and I was successful with the regular APRS digis on Greylock and Equinox (actually Equinox was better) but I had nothing to check on Camelback. There was some skepticism here about the path from Utsayantha to Camelback, but I figured that I could bend the signal around some of the higher (by not much) hills and make it. That's the brief story so far. Now, how did you make out with connections? I'm sure you could hit Equinox, but how did you go south? Here are the two packets that I caught from you: UTSAY>TRRS9T,MDMTNS-7*,HOP7-2,HOP7-7:`f?Bl #/]">m}= N2YP>4R2S9S,MDMTNS-7*,HOP7-3,7-7:`f?Bl v\`">i}GP MT UTSAYANTHA_" According another HT that I was monitoring your first packet was from a Kenwood TM-D710, and the second one from a Yaesu FTM-350 (or 400). Of course, Kenwoods are the standard in this operation because they digipeat, and the Yaesu's do not. I have both, and they are useful for different purposes. I was running the MDMTNS-7 digipeater with a TM-D710A. My logger was an old Kenwood TH-D7G with a terminal emulator on my notebook computer to monitor the transmissions from my digi. That's why you see MDMTNS-7* as the first alias in the path. Your decremented HOP count received by my digi was HOP7-3, and it transmitted 7-2 to the next node and to my logger. The repeat count of your packet to me would have been 4. You sent 7-7, the others repeated it as 7-6, 7-5, 7-4, and then 7-3 as I received it and then passed it as 7-2. That is one more hop than the "short route" which would be UTSAY>SAMSPT-10>CMLBK-9>GDHILL-8>MDMTNS-7. I suspect that it first went north to either EQUINX-12 or GRYLCK-11>, then SAMSPT-10>CMLBK-9>GDHILL-8>MDMTNS-7. The repeat count of your second packet, from N2YP, would be 3 by the same reasoning, probably via the "short route." In either case, with Utsayantha being able to hit Equinox, as I know we can, and Sams Point to the south, as I think we have seen, we might eliminate one node in the chain and extend the system by one link using HOP7-7,HOP7-7. If Utsayantha could hit Camelback, probably with a directional antenna, that would allow extension by two links. Again, many thanks for activating Utsayantha. I would like to stay in touch and maybe work out some more details. I'm familiar with Unadilla, too, because in one of my earlier lives I was the D&H Railroad Track Supervisor at Oneonta. I laid the rail through Wells Bridge in 1970. It might still be there. Do you know any Otego firemen who were D&H railroaders, too? 73, Gordon / WJ3K