Allstar link

A friend told me about allstarlink.org but i dont how to use it any advice

 

This is the first I heard of it. I registered - I'll see if I can figure it out. I will not be around to play with it for a while, though. Hopefully, someone else has experience with it.

 

Allstar is used in many states as a alternate to regular 2 meter / 440 repeaters - which has little or no traffic.

It's not the best system - when it comes to audio quality and it lacks rodger beeps - so it's not uncommon for the people using it to say over a bunch of times.

Vo/IP such as the WAN repeater system is a lot better, it uses a different type of program - Asterix was one of the things I heard the designers talk about.

The funny thing is - a large chunk of the repeaters on the WAN system uses the Allstar nodes to connect up to the system.

As with all repeater links, eventually the maintenence and down time gets to be too much and the owners gets tired of maintaining the system and sooner or later it will fail and the people will release the repeaters back to amateur use locally and then they will just go quiet again.

The WAN on the other hand, is maintained by the repeater owners, for the owners, hence they want it to work all the time - because they use it in their travels between their home QTH and work, which for some of the people is 100+ miles. So basically it is a rich mans HF, without the drop outs or the large antenna requirements.

The only bad thing is - the best repeater owners are the ones that doesn't use their own repeaters - because then you don't have anyone lording over you with their rules and regulations, or chasing you off the repeater when they want to use it. And you don't have to sit there listening to nodes connecting and disconnecting and computer talk between the repeater owners who tries to understand the system that they built.
http://www.wanrepeater.net/Home_Page.php

 

How do you transmit because ive hit transmit and it dosent work

 

KB3WIH - for which are you talking about?

Echolink into the Target machines or Echolink into the WAN Repeater system.

If the node is active, you can kerchunk it and it will identify, if it is not - it will not transmit.
With the WAN - I think they had problems with too many people visiting the repeaters and not talking and so they disconnected a bunch of them from the Echolink System.

With the Target- they do not have courtesy tones - hence you do not know where a transmission starts and stops, kind of like HF where you have to guess.

Some of the old guys I normally talk to on Simplex 2 meters in the morning, has a bad CB habit of talking and then not taking their turn and talking again and that causes people to double.
The problem is - they have been talking simplex for so long, they don't know how to talk Ham anymore. Maybe I am just rambling here - but the point is - when you use the Target machines - you have to identify yourself and then wait and see if anyone comes back to you.

 

im talking about allstarlink.org