[SEDXC] KS4Q DX Cluster Update

[Ernie Zingleman]

Thanks to all that attended the SEDXC meeting and saw my powerpoint presentation on the cluster.  I enjoyed doing for it all of you.

Here is a quick update.  

For those of you wanting to know about RF access through the equipment near Mt. Oglethorpe in Pickens County, here are the call signs and frequencies.

N3DAB-3 or OGL3   2400 bps  on 145.09  MHz
N3DAB-2 or OGL2   1200 bps   on 145.09 MHz

Once you connect to one of the above, you then do a connect to OGL1    Once you do that, you then do a connect to KS4Q  The Mt. Oglethorpe area equipment has EXCELLENT coverage to the S and SW of Pickens County.  To the east and north, the RF path is partially obstructed.  Since Pickens County is to the north of Cherokee County, this is probably not an issue for most Atlanta area hams.

Sawnee Mtn is still on the air on 145.01 MHz.  If you haven't done it in a while, you connect to SAW3 (2400 bps), then SAW1, then KS4Q

If you have trouble connecting at 2400 bps, you might have problems with over or under modulation.  Try 1200 bps and see if it works at that speed.  The lower speed will be more forgiving.


The AR-Cluster node and the new CC Cluster node are now running on a new hardware platform under Windows 2003 Server.  All User preferences and log-in information that you may have entered in the past was transferred.  The telnet addresses are:

AR-Cluster  "dx.ks4q.net"
CC-Cluster  "dx.ks4q.net:7373"   Don't use the quotation marks when entering the addresses!

You can also access the DX web page which has spots at:   http://dx.ks4q.net:4000   I recently changed this address so please make a note of the new one!

If you want help with your filter settings, just let me know.  It only takes a second or two to set them.  

If you wish to test your filter settings (CC Cluster only!), you can check some of them by doing this:   Instead of entering "dx" before the spot, enter "dxt".  If you filter is set incorrectly for the spot that you entered, you and only you will see it.  If the filter is set correctly, not even you will see it!

For those of you that have not tried the new CC Cluster node, all dx spots are loaded and cached from computer memory.  The new platform runs 1 Gig of extremely fast DDR2 dual channel memory.  This makes spot lookups extremely fast.  With CC Cluster, you may also have have different filtering set for each INDIVIDUAL band; something not provided by AR-Cluster.  For instance, your spot filtering criteria might be different for 6 meters from the other HF bands.

Lastly, if you grow tired of all the conversations on the cluster conducted by Announcements to the whole world, you can turn those off on a per cluster user basis.

Please let me know if you have any questions!

73, Ernie KS4Q
ks4q at zingleman.com