Okay I'll check that out later on, I was thinking..

Soon after there was an e-mail from Ian, G3ZHI and he told me
that he was speaking with Dan, SM6TZL right now.

Ehm.. Now? but.. Dan is "Down Under", not in the UK,
now i was really confused..

But also he was mentioning a system that was able to link
repeaters togheter, and he also told me that he whould
be able to patch me through to Dan.

Now I was really curious about this, and loaded up my browser
against Ian's webpage, and started to find what both these
two gentlemens was talking about, and started to read everything
I found about IRLP and ILINK.

WOW, what nice and exciting systems!

Ian mentioned I-link, and if I used this he could patch
me through to Dan in "Down Under", so I downloaded the I-link program,
and started this up to try it out. While I was trying to learn how
to use the program I was called up by several stations around the world.
I had many nice contacts through I-link the first days. :-)

I had more contact with Ian through e-mail, and one morning when I was
at work I got a e-mail from Ian, he told me he was talking to Dan,
and chould patch me through to Dan now.

Oh, started up my laptop and fired up I-link and e-mailed Ian that I was
online on I-link now, and after a couple of minutes he connected me and
Ian passed (manual) me out on their local repeater that was connected
to a repeater in Perth where Dan was, Dan and me had a nice chat! :-)

The people at my work heard me speaking english and swedish and was wondering
what I was doing, and started to gather around me. After the chat with
Dan and Ian, I had to explain what I was doing, and all was excited about
the system, even my boss.. hihi :-)

After some more reading about the two systems, I found that IRLP
should be the system for us, as this is strictly radio-to-radio
communication only.

Now I was hooked, whe MUST have IRLP connection to our local repeater!

I saw that David, VE7LTD should go on vacation soon, so there was no
time to waste. I phoned the president in our club and told him what I have done,
and he was excited about the IRLP system aswell.

We had a border meeting a couple of days after, and I informed
about the IRLP system, we also listen to Live365, and we all agreed
to invest in this system.

We was really lucky to get the order to David before the "last date".

One day when I was home for lunch, I found the package from David
in my mailbox, Geee.. yeah, finally we got it!

So, this lunch was done at the computer, while installing the Linux system.
After the lunch and Linux was installed, I had to go back to the work and
do some other stuff there.

After the work I spend the evening to hook up the IRLP board
with the laptop and to my Icom IC-3200E radio. After all the test
was done as described in the documentation, it should work..

hmm.. that was easy.. almost too easy.. must double check again..

Yea.. seems to work! :-)

Now, e-mail went of to "installs" and inform them that our node is ready
for install of the IRLP software. :-)

Waiting.. more waiting.. and after several hours of waiting,
when I was almost off to bed, I saw Peter, VK2YX from Australia
was broadcasting a message that he was starting to install our node!

I was waiting to hear something on the radio, but instead I heard
how the PCMCIA ethernet board gone disabled, uh.. what happend now?

I started to dig into the box, to find what was wrong. Suddently
I've got e-mail from Peter, and he asked if I had PCMCIA network card,
and if so, he was truly sorry for disabled this,
and he told me how to start this up again..

Now it was really late, or really early in the morning,
so I had to go to bed and get some sleep, so I should be able
to work later in a few hours.. hi

In the morning, when I checked my mail, I got an e-mail
from Peter, who told me he was going with the install again.

5-10 minutes later I heard Peter called me on the Radio via IRLP!

YEA! We are finally on!

I had a nice chat with Peter, even with my rusty english.. hi

This was a very exciting and funny morning, and I will never forget this,
as this was a milestone in our clubs 11 years history!

Many QSO was done this day, and more the days after.
Lots of people was calling and congratulated us to the first Swedish node.

The node was on a simplex frequency the first days,
and the following weekend we modified the repeater logic.
It was now carrier operated instead, so we could put the
node on the repeater, to get a better coverage of the node.

It's still carrier oprated, but this is going to be changed later on.

Our Club should have a annual meeting in a week or two,
and we talked how much fun it whould be if Dan, SM6TZL who
is on vacation in Australia whould check into the meeting.

After some e-mail with Dan about this sked, we found out that
he should be in Cairns at the same time as the meeting, great stuff!

When the meeting was taking place, and we was in the middle of the agenda,
we heard the IRLP system was opened up, and Dan was calling for SK6BA.
The president was holding the meeting and had a QSO with Dan,
that we was all excited to listen to. :-)

I can't find a better way to demonstrate the IRLP system for all
the people who was on the annual meeting. Dan is "Down Under" and
still he can take part in the meeting in Sweden. GREAT! :-)

I want to direct a special thanks to,
VE7LTD David for making this excellent IRLP system!

SM6TZL Dan
For being "Down Under", so he could find out about the IRLP system,
without you on vacation we whould not have Node #800 today!

G3ZHI Ian
For informing me about I-link, IRLP system and manual linking to
Dan in Australia several times. I can't thank you sufficient much!

VK2TTY Andrew
For informing me about IRLP system.

VK2YX Peter
For the excellent installation and help with the PCMCIA board ;-)

WY0X Nate
For technical support on my questions I had before the board arrived.

And, everyone who have called us up!

I first experienced IRLP when I was travelling Australia and arrived in Perth on January 7th. I had brought my handheld tranciver IC-W21 in my backpack.
I was very surprised to copy stations from Sydney on the local repeater in Perth, since that is a distance of 5000km! Thought, gee, must be good propagation today, hi hi! Even US, Canada and UK came through with booming signals. So, I wasn't aware of the IRLP until I met Ian (G3ZHI) and he told me about the system. This was all new to me and I had a couple of nice QSO's this first day in Perth.

I thoght this would be a way of get in touch with the guys back home. However there were no node in Sweden, but Ian offered to link a sked on the internet. (thanks alot!)
So, I dropped a mail to Morgan (SM6TKY) known as the computer guru, and I was sure that he would be very excited by this new thing.
And, the next day we had a QSO on the IRLP via Ian in England. What a thrill!

As I travelled Australia I had many nice contacts both on the local repeaters and on the IRLP.
I stayed two weeks in WA and then I flew to Sydney and went on north along to coast to Cairns QLD.

By the time and got to Cairns on the 19th of February the new node #800 in Sweden was up and running! I couldn't belive it!! What a good, and fast job by Morgan!!! He had put it all together in one month... though, I knew I could count on the guys back home : )

73 de Dan SM6TZL

Radio portable from Kings Park, Perth.