Here is some good news…EI4FMG Lives!!

As a lot of you may already know that the 4m Echolink Gateway EI4FMG has been off the air now for about a year or so, it was having “technical” difficulties and needed to be taken off the air for repairs in 2014.

However due to my bad health the gateway has sat mostly in my shed untouched and unloved since then. That was until a few months ago when I took it out and assembled it and tried it out in my shack, I was having intermittent issues with it transmitting and receiving audio.

So I brought it down to the Dundalk Radio Club (EI7DAR) a few weeks ago and got one of our resident techie guys to have a look at it.

Last Wednesday he brought in his trusty test equipment and started to work, after an hour or so of dedication he finally traced the issue back to source, thankfully it was a fixable problem and with a few minutes with his soldering iron all was repaired.

So now all that needs to be done is a replacement cable to go between the interface and the radio and the gateway will be up and running soon.

I will put it on test at my QTH for a few days and then it will return to the hilltop site where it belongs…

I would like to thank Richard the Squirrel for his technical skills for getting the gateway repaired.

When EI4FMG was up and running it was working well and had great coverage, see below map of location and also coverage map.

So just to remind you all:

Dundalk Amateur Radio Society operates a 4 metre VHF internet gateway node using the Echolink protocol on 70.350Mhz. The gateway is located at Fieldstown, Monasterboice just north of Drogheda Co.Louth. From this location the gateway provides VHF communications for a large area of the east coast,for more information contact EI4FMG Gateway Manager: EI4DIB (ei4dib@gmail.com).

CALLSIGN - EI4FMG AUTO CW ID EVERY 15MINS.

LOCATION - FIELDSTOWN, MONASTERBOICE.

NODE NO. 57006.

LOC SQUARE - IO63TS.

LAT:53.76981 LONG:-6.37524.

METRE ABOVE SEA LEVEL - 122M.

MOTOROLA GM350.

ECHOLINK EI4JR INTERFACE.

SIGMA WDATC70 3dB  ANTENNA @5M AGL.

FREQUENCY - TX / RX 70.350Mhz.

TX POWER - 15 WATTS.

ACCESS - CTCSS 88.5HZ.

Echolink DTMF Commands:

xxxx - Connect to node number xxxx

00 - Connect to random node any type

01 - Connect to random repeater/link node

02 - Connect to random conference node

03 - Connect to random single user node

# - Disconnect the last node

## - Disconnect all nodes

09 - Reconnect last node

08 - Lists nodes currently connected

* - Play Node ID info

123 - Play current time

**1 - Play current weather conditions

*80 - Play RSGB Weekly News

*81 - Play AR Newsline