You heard that right... Echolink has arrived here in Many.  For those that may have missed all the racket, testing, and playing Friday evening... there is now a tool available to further assist our communications efforts.  Those not familiar with EchoLink, take a look at the Echolink website to get more information, download the software etc...

What is it?  There are two types of systems.  

For an individual user, Echolink is software that runs on demand on your computer (headphones/microphone is recommended) that you can use to connect to people, repeaters, conferences etc. all over the world.  It requires only an internet connection to do so... dial up internet access is supported, but high speed internet, DSL, cable, etc may yield better results... Even Satellite access will work.  There is even an iPhone app that appears to work well.

For a repeater link - it runs 24/7 on a dedicated computer that is connected both to the internet and also connected to the .280 machine via a dedicated radio link. 

What does it do?  

For a personal node...You can access the 147.280 repeater to communicate to other stations around Sabine Parish without keying your radio, but you are not limited to just our machine, thousands of repeaters all over the world are accessible.  Additionally you can connect to another ham's computer directly without using a repeater link.

For our repeater link...  From an RF perspective you can access the node by 'connecting' to the node and then dialing in the node number of the internet station, repeater link, conference, etc.. that you wish to communicate with.  The software will automagically connect to the desired node if available and you talk like the other stations were across the street.

Practical example, you are mobile in Many and want to contact Fred who is also mobile but in Boston, Mass, Key up your radio, ID, simply key in the "node number" for the machine that is linked in Boston where Fred hangs out, the system will set up a Link between the Many repeater and the Boston repeater, once the link is established you can call and talk to Fred.  Magic!  Keep in mind that your conversation is over RF, that means anyone listening to the .280 and the machine in Boston who is monitoring the frequency can hear both sides, and can participate in the conversation.  The machines are "linked"  until they get a disconnect command from either party (or timeout from inactivity).  As mentioned earlier, there are nodes ALL OVER THE WORLD!

We have published a basic listing of commands and procedures on our website here.

We'll begin assembling a listing of our local folks' node numbers that you can print and carry around, if you have a node number email it to me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it to be included in the list.

That are a lot more features that we'll look into bringing about for our node in the future.