| KA9WDX |
Rating:      |
2022-10-29 | |
| Works great, purchased in 2013, still works. |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
I purchased one back in 2013...
I sent ARS an E-Mail message telling them that I wanted to have it connected to a FT-1900R and they wired it for me and sent the interface to me.
It was almost plug and play...just had to open the proper ports in the router in order for the UDP part to work...setting the Port Forwarding up...just found out what IP address was assigned to the PC that would run the Echolink software and set the internal and external ports to the same ports and put the PC's IP address in there, "telling" the router where to route the incoming UDP, "traffic" and it started working.
I just connected to the Echotest server and adjusted the receive POT while the connect message was playing, to set a normal listening level, and watched the on-screen signal strength indicator to see where the level was, and when I transmitted, I adjusted the transmit level POT while talking, and set it to approximately the same level as the receive level showed.
Sometimes the device would key up and send noise or dead carrier into the Echolink network, but I just adjusted the "squelch," or whatever it's called, that's on-screen, by clicking on the indicator and holding the button down, to drag the adjustment up a bit.
However, I set up a transmit and receive PL tone in the transceiver, so as to avoid any background noise, or ambient noise, from sending noise or a dead carrier through the Echolink network or system.
Of course I did go through the different settings in the Echolink program to, "fine tune" things, like the Squelch Crash I think it's called, and the different timing parameters, but the settings weren't a big deal, and to add whatever I wanted to show as a Latitude, Longitude, my name, etc, and choosing whether I wanted to run as a repeater, a link, or just a keyboard user, and entering my user name and password, etc.
I usually set the squelch, or whatever it's called, to between a 5 and a 9 shown by hovering the cursor over the "slider," depending upon what transceiver I have it connected to, between the FT-1900R, the FTM-100, and the FTM-7250...and depending upon where the on-screen indicator showed when "idle."
As far as not transmitting goes, if someone keys up at the same time you do it won't go into transmit, or if someone is talking, if you're receiving audio in other words, then of course it won't go into transmit either, which is normal.
Right now I'm only using the receive part of it connected to the back of a public service scanner to send the scanner audio to the laptop, and then using another program to send the audio to Broadcastify, so I'd like to get another one.
However, for a long time ARS showed that the interface was no longer available, and they were going to put out an updated version of it, but they showed a different model that didn't use VOX for PTT keying.
Now I don't even see ARS showing for interfaces at all.
Anyway, I'm either going to get another Echolink interface, or an interface that can be used for Echolink, or get a cable to connect to the Record jack of the scanner and then to an USB port of my laptop to stream audio to Broadcastify, and then reuse the interface that I have for Echolink again.
I did have a couple of cables, but they didn't work right, so I guess they were wired correctly as they were, plus I had purchased a cable that I thought would work, but it must be wired wrong also, as it also didn't work, and the USB end got warm when plugged into the USB port.
Anyway, for me this interface worked great, and still works great, and was fairly easy to set up, but the, "Echolink guys" prefer that you don't use a VOX-Operated interface, and recommend a COR-Operated one instead, so that's why I might get a different interface that I can use for Echolink.
This interface still works for me, even though the case cover is getting cracked by a couple of the screw holes, but it still stays on and you can see the power, transmit, and receive lights through the cover. |
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