Feb. 18, 2008 - de Shawn KD8FJH:

I began work on a 3rd Digi, which was occasionally seen as active for some limited equipment testing. The hardware is currently running on a tower at Rocky Knob, near the Hospital in Chillicothe. It is running as KD8FJH-1, with the uSmartDigi board & programming as it was at the Londonderry site, only the location has changed.

The Londonderry Digi is currently offline. The solar project is essentially a success - however I decided to take the digi offline for a few reasons.

One of the main reasons is the Rocky Knob site has a much better coverage of the Scioto River Valley than Londonderry. I have been talking to the people at TOSRV, and there is much interest in using APRS during this year's event.

I'm planning on new digi to possibly be located near Jasper, Ohio, which could possibly finish coverage down through Portsmouth.

KD8FJH-10 is currently online at the Londonderry Solar Site. While things are in flux there, I will be doing some telemetry using an OpenTracker+, which looked to be an excellent way to send temperature and battery voltage data for remote monitoring. I thought it would be a good way to keep the site productive, while things are being worked on.

I'm anxious to get ahold of a Tracker2 when they become available. It looks like a nice solution to the digi/telemetry desires at the solar site. I am a bit spoiled on the filtering ability of the uSmartDigi though, so I'm a little torn on what I'll use where. I'll decide on something, I'm sure.

June 13, 2007 - de Shawn KD8FJH:

Our Londonderry site (KD8FJH-1) is currently online. The digi system is 99% complete (I would say 100%, but I know i'm going to still make some small changes to the system, so it will never really be 100%). So far I am satisfied with the TNC-X & X-Digi. For our application on a solar-power site, a basic, no-frills, low-power system, it fits the bill.

At my QTH just east of Chillicothe, I am running an UI-VIEW32 IGate running on a 1.8GHz P4 XP-Pro (KD8FJH). Except for the rare issue, this system is 24/7 and has battery-backup power.. I've also been running Xastir under Linux and am very impressed with the mapping features - I may consider a migration to such a system.

We (KD8EAD/KD8FJH) are starting to consider a second digi site - possibly to the south of Chillicothe somewhere. I am also considering obtaining a uSmartDigi - placing it at the Londonderry site for evaluation, and then putting the X-Digi at the 2nd site. Various locations and hardware configurations are being considered.

There is some local interest in a few weather stations being added, in support of a few operators who hang glide.

73, Shawn KD8FJH
Chillicothe, OH