Kamloops Amateur Radio Club

VE7RKA

• 146.960 - 600 Greenstone Mtn. Voice Repeater (5800' ASL)
• Links to Salmon Arm (Fly Hills 146.76 -) Shuswap ARC repeaters, and IRLP
• Autopatch
• APRS

Click here for Greenstone link codes and procedures.
Click here for a good guide on IRLP operating procedures.
Pictures can be found here.

VE7RLO

• 147.320 + 600 Mt. Lolo repeater (5700' ASL)
• Links to the SIRG repeaters.

For local reception, this repeater uses a voting controller. The VHF receivers have been removed from the mountain and several will be remoted out in the surrounding area. The controller picks the remote receiver with the best signal to noise ratio and feeds that signal to the high powered VHF transmitter on Mt. Lolo. Existing remote receivers are located on Greenstone Mtn, Mt Dufferin and Campbell Hill near Cache Creek.
Pictures can be found here.

VE7RLO link codes
901 - All links off
902 - All links on
903 - VHF drop disconnected from link ports
904 - VHF drop connect to Silver Star and points South
905 - VHF drop connect to UHF hub and points North and West
906 - UHF South link connect to UHF hub (connects points North and West to Southern network)

VE7KEG

147.180 +600 Coach Hills. (PEP Repeater open to all)

VE7KIG

147.240 +600, North Kamloops

VE7CRW

442.050 +5000 North facing directional from Aberdeen.

VE7TYN

146.980 -600 Mount Thynne, Coquihalla link to Vernon, part of the NORAC SIRG network.

VE7RTN

147.300 +600 Barriere

VE7LGN

147.100 +600 Logan Lake, Highland Valley Group. (Currently non-functioning?)
Pictures can be found here.

Packet repeater information can be found at the TPARC Website's Network Map

There is also a local Telpac node, VE7CHW-10 at 144.970

The Greenstone mountain repeater (146.96 -600) has 2 links available. One connects the VHF repeater with the local Internet Radio Linking Project (IRLP) node (108) and the other connects to the Salmon Arm repeater (146.76) on Fly Hills.
While both links are intended to be left on for the most part they can be individually dialed up or down.
The codes for these links are set up slightly different from what has been common in this area in the past. The new code format is based on telephone prefixes. Each of the ports on the repeater is assigned a 3-digit code based on the telephone prefix of the area it connects to.
Greenstone has 3 ports; the local (VHF) port is 372, the IRLP port is 554 as the IRLP node is in North Kamloops and the Salmon Arm port is 832.
Each code has a suffix of 1 or 0 depending on whether you want the port turned on or off. In addition, because we must also send codes through the repeater to other locations, we must precede each local code with a * (star) to tell the controller that this code is for it. There are also 2 special codes that will link all ports together in a net mode or disconnect all ports.

For reference, here is a table with all the link codes for the 146.96 repeater.

On the VHF side (146.96) you can easily tell from the courtesy tones what links are on and which are off. Each port adds its own distinctive tone to the complete courtesy tone sequence. The VHF port being always on has a short 700 Hz tone. The IRLP port has a short 1000 Hz tone and the Salmon Arm port has a short 1300 Hz tone. Therefore, when you unkey, if all you hear is a single beep, that indicates that all links are off. If you hear 2 beeps that indicates that one link is on. The frequency of the second beep will indicate which link is active. Don't worry, you will get used to the sound of the different beeps. Three beeps (sounding like a ble-e-ep), indicates that all links are on.
Additionally, transmissions originating on the link ports can be identified by a single short beep. Again there are 2 distinctive tones used for the 2 ports. The lower tone indicates the transmission originated from the IRLP port while higher tone indicates the transmission originated from the Salmon Arm link.

Remember that these codes only apply to the local repeater and its links. For a link to be complete you must also tell the device at the far end what you want to do.
In the case of Salmon Arm, you must also tell the Salmon Arm repeater to connect its UHF link port to the VHF port. The codes to do this are:
#76 to capture the Salmon Arm controller followed in the same transmission by:
8321 to link the UHF link port to the VHF repeater.
To disconnect the link at the far end send #76 followed in the same transmission by:
8320 to disconnect the UHF link port from the VHF repeater.

IRLP is something relatively new to Kamloops. The Internet Radio Linking Project uses the internet to link local VHF/UHF radio networks to other similar networks around BC and the world. As previously mentioned, the local IRLP node is accessed via the Greenstone repeater on 146.96 -600. The actual IRLP node is hosted on the VE7TSI Internet Gateway computer. The link port for the IRLP node should be up all the time but if it is not, send the appropriate code as indicated above to link the VHF port to the IRLP UHF link port.

There are more than a 1000 other nodes around the world that we can connect to with more coming on-line all the time. Imagine talking to Hams in Hawaii or Washington, DC from your handheld. This is linking like we have not seen before!

The process to access the links are as follows.

1. Identify yourself! (e.g. SAY "VE7RKA from yourcall")
2. Send *5541 (Star - five - five - four - one)
3. You should hear "IRLP ON" in CW.
4. Identify yourself again as you are now transmitting on UHF. (e.g. SAY "VE7TSI from yourcall)
5. Send the 4-digit code for the IRLP node you wish to connect to.
6. You should hear "remote_node_call, remote_node_location, Link ON". (e.g. "VE7RVN, Vernon, Link ON")
7. Call your other station and have your conversation.

To take the link down, it is just as easy.

1. First disconnect the internet link by sending the global disconnect code, 73)
2. You should hear "remote_node_call, remote_node_location, Link OFF". (e.g. "VE7RVN, Vernon, Link OFF")
3. If you have brought up the local link you can leave it up.
4. Finally sign clear.

Click here for the current status of VE7TSI.

For a complete and current list of active node calls and locations, click here .

For more information on the Internet Repeater Linking Project, please feel free to surf to http://www.irlp.net .