Saturday, March 18, 2017

Experiments With Yaesu Fusion

We now have four stations in Galway operational on Yaesu Fusion. 3 have FTM400XDR transceivers and the other has a FTM100. Two in Mayo should be on shortly so the efforts have finally borne fruit. Possibly another FTM100 in Galway shortly. There is another operator who ownes a Yaesu FT991. Nine on the air in a short time is a great effort.

The Limerick area, due South of Galway,  have a Yaesu Fusion Repeater which provides a good signal throughout Galway and into Co. Mayo as far west as Westport. The current number of Fusion operators in the Limerick area would appear to be around ten or eleven.

Plans are to place a Wires-X gateway online by the end of April, which will serve Galway City and the surrounding area of 25 Km radius.

The first experiment was carried out between EI3FEB in Headford and myself in Galway City - a path of 23.5 Km but it had a few hills in between the two stations so was a poor path at the best of times. The path was chosen as this was probably the worst signal strength achievable.

Both rigs were set up to transmit 5 watts and the initial transmission was made on FM 


As can be seen on the display the signal strength did not even register and the FM signal had the usual hiss encountered with FM signals received on the fringe area. For an S0 signal it was not too band. The FTM 400 recorded the returned signal as S0.5 - S1. Readable with plenty of hiss. Note the FM displayed to the right of the frequency displayed indicating this was in the FM mode. The lower green light indicates FM reception.

The mode was changed to C4FM and the signal received was most impressive 


This signal was still received at a S0 level but his time in C4FM. The quality of audio was crystal clear with absolutely no background noise. Note the DN displayed to the right of the frequency displayed denoting in digital mode. The blue light denotes the reception of a digital signal. When the digital signal is received other information is embedded within it which includes the Callsign and also GPS coordinates. The distance as shown was derived from that information.



Quite impressive with  no R2D2 sounds from the received signal.

More to follow   ..........................