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Last Updated: March 26 2021 17:51

Amateur Radio Voice Switch

Usage Instructions

Over the next few weeks and months I will be testing my amateur voice switch on GB3DY, GB3EE, GB3RB, and 430.025Mhz. If you hear the switch on air you are definitely encouraged to 'have a go', if it breaks then please don't worry, it's probably my fault and the more you break it the better chance I have to make it stable.

If you do feel brave enough to 'have a go' here is how.
You will need a radio with DTMF, or a DTMF mic (DTMF is also sometimes called 'Touchtone')
On all switch ports you will also need 71.9Hz CTCSS encode.
When the switch is on air I will try to stick to the following numbering.

Port 1 430.025
Port 2 GB3EE
Port 3 GB3RB
Port 4 GB3DY

To connect to any port dial *001X* where 'X' is the port number. If successful you will get a voice announcement confirming the status of the connection "GB3RB now connected to GB3EE via switch G1SLE" etc.

Once you are connected the switch should be pretty well transparent, whatever is received on one channel will go out on the other. Activity and inactivity timeouts of 4 minutes are in place; this means that after 4 minutes of constant receiving or 4 minutes without any traffic an auto disconnect will be generated.

To manually disconnect at any time dial *0010* disconnection will be confirmed by a Voice announcement "GB3RB now disconnected from GB3EE" etc.

If you dial an invalid port number of dial a port already busy on a call you will hear a Morse 'ERR' (dit di-dah-dit di-dah-dit). Eventually the morse error prompt will also be replaced by a voice prompt.

Finally a special port number 9 is provided. If you dial *0019* from any port you will be connected to the conference bridge, which will allow you to talk to any other channels connected to the bridge in a 'one talks all hear' conference call.

A few notes on switch 'etiquette':

It makes sense to use the switch only when necessary to make a contact. For example if 2 users are both able to work via 2 repeaters they should have their QSO on 1 of them, rather than networking the 2 together. However if you are struggling to find a contact on one repeater connecting 2 together will double your chances and if both repeaters are idle will do nobody any harm, but once you make your contact if you find it could be continued on just one of the repeaters then disconnect from the switch and continue just using the 1 repeater.

If you make a connection, when you are finished you should check if anybody wants the connection and if not disconnect. This prevents unsuspecting users who arrive some minutes later from being surprised to find that they are using 2 repeaters!

You should never disconnect an active connection whilst it is being used be somebody else, this is obviously very rude and could be regarded as deliberate interference, which is technically illegal (check your BR68).

Hopefully I will continue to improve the switch performance with time as development continues. Status as 3/3/06 is that ports 1,2,3 and 4 are available. Once the prompts are totally finished I'll begin to look at adding more repeaters (GB3LS, GB3DS, GB3XN and GB3NM keepers have all expressed interest) This may require a move to a remote site, which I don't want to do until I'm 100% confident of the software's stability.

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