Hi Peter. I was N of Oswestry today and you gated a couple of positions from my tracker (GW4BVE-3) which was using the little rubber duck inside the car.
73 John GW4BVE
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Glad it works!
For those that are still wondering - I believe I only changed the frequency and used the default settings for Power (20) , Spreading Factor (12) , and Coding Rate (5)
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I thought I’d have a go at this project and had a few hours of frustration with code not uploading / running well. After a load of tinkering it looks like there’s been a change of component in the TTGO TBeam boards and the original repository doesn’t yet support them. A change from AXP921 to AXP2101
An alternative is by CD2RXU for both tracker and iGate. All seems to be ok for me now
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I think the reasoning behind having a separate callsign even if you don’t transmit is something to do with GDPR/Data Protections issues, and I’m sure that someone somewhere who came up with that totally overthought that!
MW0GWY-10 LoRa IGate is now operational in IO73UB , located 4 miles south of Caernarfon, 300ft absl.
Should be good for the Western side of Snowdonia and Angelsey .
QRG: 439.9125MHz
B/W: 125kHz
SF: 12
CR: 5
73 Rob G0PEB
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GW4BML-10 LoRa Igate is Operational as of 24th Aug 2023, Located in IO82GN near Newtown in Mid Wales at an elevation of approx. 1500ft absl. Hopefully good coverage from surrounding SOTA summits.
QRG: 439.9125MHz
B/W: 125kHz
SF: 12
CR: 5
Antenna : X30 Colinear
73 Rob G0PEB
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I know everything is going onto 439.9125 but did you know that APRS iGate Digipeaters can now run both AX.25 and LoRA on 144.800 as in dual mode?
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I’ve just put together a LoRa tracker and was testing it out on the moors this morning, from the southern slopes of Winter Hill (well below the AZ).
It was getting decent coverage from the IGates down on the Welsh Borders:
so it should work even better from the summit of G/SP-010.
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These are back in stock, available in the UK from The Pi Hut
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I take it you meant “We have also been told to not allow any amplifiers either because of the increased spectrum noise that potentially comes from these low-power device ICs etc.”
This probably answers my question about building a 2M APRS Digipeater iGate using a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino Uno using micro transmitter/receivers like those produced by Radiometrix or using something like a DRA-818VHF mini Transceiver from SV1AFN.com. without using an actual radio. The reason for wanting to do it is there are plenty of good sites for an APRS digipeater which doesn’t have access to electricity or the internet so I was looking at a self-sufficient option that can be powered by a solar panel and use a microwave link to connect to the internet, Apologies for going slightly off-topic.
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Welcome to put one in my woods. It’s got solar power and an excellent take off. Two people have said they wanted to do so but neither came up with the gear.
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There’s a letter in this month’s Radcom telling everyone to put their iGates on 433.775 MHz 
Thanks Peter. My copy arrived earlier today so will take a look when I get home.
Dave
All LoRa users should consider having a look at the nice piece of software by Ricardo CA2RXU …
LoRa iGate
LoRa Tracker
73 Martin
OE5REO
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And yet the Band Plan on p58 of that same RadCom shows that in the UK 433.775 is a RAYNET channel, so 433.800 is recommended for APRS - but that assumes 1200 baud AFSK in a 12.5kHz channel, not the much wider bandwidth of LoRa.
And in populated areas, the 433.8-434.25 “Digital communications & experiments” allocation is full of ISM-band QRM, so the 439MHz segment is much more attractive.
I’ve found that from Winter Hill (the slopes below G/SP-010), my little T-Beam tracker can reach extraordinary distances on 439MHz:
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The best DX for my receiver is around 55 miles, but that’s probably not too bad for an indoor antenna. I wonder if the included stubby antenna mounted outdoors would be any better.
Not sure how far away my tracker has been picked up, it’s been a long time since I used it but wasn’t very impressed with it.