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GB7BM in central Birmingham has joined the cluster and is now fully operational.
It's on DVU32 - which is TX on 439.4000, RX on 430.4000 and colour code 8. It is co-sited with GB3CB and we would expect to see a similar coverage across the city centre. The cluster has been up and running for over 6 years and the network continues to grow, albeit at a slower pace than in previous years. We continue to see 'out of area' access to the cluster on 23575 and people enjoy the wider Brandmeister facilities available to them.
Many thanks to the following people for their continued support during 2021: G0WEB G1VQV G4ICU G4JCP G4LVV G6DQN G7RCP M0XZS ... and a few others who didn't provide callsigns or made anonymous donations via PayPal. It's been a difficult year for all of us and your help and contributions are always appreciated. Thank you! ** Important Change **
The Kidderminster DMR repeater has changed frequency from DVU-R23 to DVU-R24; its now on 430.300 / 439.300 colour code 8 ... so please update your radios! Over the past few months people on the DY and SB repeaters who use Motorola radios (such as the DM 3600 or 4600 mobiles) have been experiencing issues with dropped audio and 'choppy' transmissions.
This is due to a feature of the ETSI DMR specification which is now becoming more common, Talker Alias. This facility sends the call sign and name of the station you are hearing directly from Brandmeister so that you don't need to maintain a list of contacts in your radio. This information is automatically passed to all Hytera and MMDVM based repeaters - unfortunately this information is incorrectly handled by Motorola radios, causing the drop-outs. Motorola repeaters are not effected as the information is not sent to them, as Brandmeister realise they don't fully support the feature. Brandmeister know there is a problem with a large number of Motorola radios but their advice is simply 'buy a new radio' - not very helpful in our opinion. As our network is mainly built using Motorola repeaters, and with a large number of 'early adopters' in our area with Motorola radios, we have decided to replace our Hytera repeaters with Motorola and eliminate the audio problem. However it does mean that Talker Alias does not work on the Salop Cluster; we feel this is a small price to pay to ensure QSO's run as smoothly as possible. GB7KR is now operational and improves coverage in and around the Kidderminster area.
For more information see krg.club. The newest member of the cluster is GB7SB in South Birmingham (specifically in the Northfield, Cotteridge and King's Norton area).
This will improve coverage along the M42 from the M5 Junction near Bromsgrove to the M42/M40 intersection and towards Birmingham Airport. The cluster has been up and running for over 5 years and the network continues to grow, albeit at a slower pace than in previous years. We continue to see 'out of area' access to the cluster on 23575 and people enjoy the wider Brandmeister facilities available to them.
Many thanks to the following people for their continued support during 2020: 2E0KPD G4BJD G4ICU G4JCP G4LVV G6DQN G7JPE G8ILN G8IMN M0XZS ... and a few others who didn't provide callsigns or made anonymous donations via our PayPal MoneyPool. It's been a difficult year for all of us and your help and contributions are appreciated. Thank you! We have disconnected the static talkgroups on Slot 2 as we found that all the repeaters were 'blocked' when 23580 was in use, preventing other users from using TG 9 or any other Brandmeister talkgroup; most noticeably when the QSOs were either between users 'out or area', both on hotspots, or TG9 (local) would have been more appropriate.
The convention now used across all repeaters in the Cluster is: Slot 1 / Talkgroup 75 linked between all repeaters in the cluster, Slot 2 / Talkgroup 9 for local use and dynamic talkgroups to access the wider Brandmeister network. |
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March 2024
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