קבוצת חובבי רדיו ישראלית לתקשורת ספרתית Israeli Amateur Radio Group for Digital Communication
קבוצת חובבי רדיו ישראלית לתקשורת ספרתית The road is long and touching, but this is the first step for the Israeli Radio Amateur Group for Digital Communication in the national data communication system. 3 stations are currently connected to the network. 4Z5RP in Hadera, plus 4X1IL and 4X1IL-1 in Kfar Yona.
Well, we've already started and it happened more than twenty years ago. The digital communication age has already started with TAPR's Packet Radio technology (though CW and RTTY are also a type of digital contact). Feasibility studies and ranges were carried out by a group of radio amateurs, Zvi Baratz, 4Z5RP, and Meir Dahan operated data communications at a frequency of 2.4 GHz between the Carmel and Tel Aviv for a range of 100 km. Ronen Pinchuk, 4Z4ZQ, who was also a member of the team described the whole process of experiments. With the entry of Wi-Fi systems into Israel, the Ministry of Communications narrowed the activity and power permitted to be used in the band of 2.4 GHz, although we still had the 13 centimeter range at full power, but there was no equipment to operate in this band. Only recently has the possibility of using this frequency range been developed, with commercial equipment for the ISM band being converted with software designed specially for radio amateurs operating digital communications between 2.3 to 2.4 GHz. The first group which started the subject was BBHN, followed by the AREDN group, who developed the software that we are currently adopting.
Radio Amateurs in the world have a special status. As part of the national allocation of IP records, the amateurs received the prefix 44. The second number in the sequence (two hexadecimal digits) in the ipv4 standard designates the country. For example, the number 138 represents Israel. The other numbers in the format 44.138.0.0 are allocated to a particular call sign.
A group called AMPR that manages the system and assigns these addresses has a site. Where you can learn how to join the registration and receive an allocation of IP addresses enthusiasts. Current list of Israeli amateurs (138) for whom addresses were assigned are:
| Network | Description |
|---|---|
44.138.0.8 /29 |
4X5MG AMPRNET Test |
44.138.0.16 /28 |
Amateur radio network services for Modiin area |
44.138.0.32 /28 |
Testing |
44.138.1.0 /24 |
4Z4ZQ |
44.138.4.0 /24 |
4X5AC Radio Over IP LAB |
44.138.5.0 /24 |
Gilboa Site AMPRNET Network |
44.138.6.0 /24 |
Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu Radio Club Network |
44.138.7.0 /24 |
4X1IL |
44.138.40.35 /32 |
KK7KX |
In his QSO Today project, Eric Guth, 4Z1UG / WA6IGR writes "Andre Hansen, K6AH, and his team of open source developers have taken amateur radio mesh networking to a new level with AREDN, that allows commercial low cost WIFI routers and access points to be used to build out local and regional broadband networks in the amateur bands above 2 GHz. Andre and I discuss this technology and its possibilities for the amateur radio community in this QSO Today."
Listen to the QSO Today podcast here.
"QSO Today is a podcast about amateur radio also known as ham radio. Every week, I interview a leader, a mover and shaker, in the amateur radio world. Many of the technologies that we enjoy today including television and radio, cell phones, computers, and the Internet were born out of the amateur radio experience. Amateur radio was the frontier where hams conducted electronic experiments in order to make that wireless contact around the World."
Parts of the list is reffering to manufacturers whose equipment is used in the AREDN project.
The current units which may be converted to AREDN firmware are marked in yellow.
Our colleague Zvi Segal 4Z1ZV presented a detailed presentation in June 2018 in Herzliya, which includes 29 pages on digital communication using the DMR method. The presentation can be seen here. You can view the entire lecture (in Hebrew) at the YouTube site here .