Ah yes that makes sense. I was taken aback by my latest install of freepbx. I feel it wasn’t as aggressive during the Digium days but it definitely left a bad taste in my mouth.

I heard good things about free switch, although it seems like a paradigm change. I’ll have to check it out.

Interesting - why avoid asterisk?

I looked into fusion to play with but I’ve been using asterisk casually since like the 00s with no issues.

Ok. Probably echo link then. In short - the repeater uses the internet as another transport. Other repeaters can link up, or you can even use their application to activate repeaters right from your computer.

You can also do similar things with other digital modes (DMR etc) but they require special radios that speak that standard.

What band mode and frequency?

I wound up with gollum. Git based with a wiki format. Works well enough for my limited use.

https://github.com/gollum/gollum

Parks On The Air.

Essentially a spotting/sked network for people operating out of state parks. You can “hunt” stations from home or you can “activate” a park by visiting one with your equipment, setting up and making 10 (IIRC) contacts. It’s a nice way to get out and explore some local parks!

https://docs.pota.app

There’s also SOTA - summits on the air, which is similar but operates from the tops of mountains.

What band are you looking to operate on? I’d say most of us got our start on repeaters so I’d say that’s the place for a simple beginner voice transmission. If you haven’t seen it yet you can use this site to help find ones near you:

https://www.repeaterbook.com/index.php/en-us/

Otherwise there are 2m and 70cm calling frequencies, I believe 146.52 and 446.00, but repeaters would be more populated.

https://hamstudy.org/sessions/remote is a good list. You may even be able to get same day testing.

Good luck!

Right on. I’ll keep an eye out for ya!

Congrats! If you haven’t yet, check out pota. Gives a nice little set of goals and community for outdoor operating.

And start studying for your general! The test isn’t much more difficult than Tech but the increase in privileges is night and day!

Excellent! Nice work.

I don’t know what dns rebind is but once DNS A records are pointed to the right place then it’s just a matter of setting up the rest of your stuff.

Is that expected? Otherwise check to make sure DNS settings for the domain are correct (eg ns records dig NS example.com IIRC).

First off - you don’t explicitly say so I just want to double check - you’re not using example.com as the actually domain correct?

If not the next thing to do would be to check out what DNS is doing. You can use the dig command to see what IP address is being returned for the domains you’re trying to hit.

dig +trace may be useful as well.

When you copy /home make sure you get the “hidden” files. They start with a “.” and some programs ignore them by default. That’s also where most configuration files are.

Check out rsync -avz

Not who you asked but I have a smartish home. There is no real need. It just affords convenience and for me lands pretty squarely in “hobby” territory.

My lights turn on prior to sunset, and turn off after I go to bed. My porch lights dim at 10pm so I don’t disturb my neighbors as much. I have additional states of lights that are predicated on various scenarios. In short, I never touch a light switch, I never walk into a dark house, and my energy usage is reduced.

My vehicle mileage and tire pressures are reported on a dashboard for me to monitor.

My network statistics are monitored and graphed.

Energy usage of electronics of interest to me are monitored and graphed.

I have a software defined radio that I’m able to use remotely. Using a smart outlet I’m able to turn it on and off remotely as well instead of leaving it on 24/7.

Unfortunately I have a camera that is cloud based my SO uses to monitor pets. Using a smart outlet I turn it on only when we are not home.

Some of this can be accomplished with less smart means, some of it can’t, but it’s been fun to get it all setup.

I like monit. It’s simple to setup and pretty flexible.

https://mmonit.com/monit/

I’m just passing through via all but i happen to be a ham and enjoy antenna design. Im not 100% sure on what you’re doing but I believe dipoles do not need a ground plane.

Where does the .44m come from? Typically dipoles are mounted at least one wavelength above the ground which would be about 2m for 137mhz.

A little bit of a different tack but check out getting into ham radio. There are a lot of kits out there that are reasonably easy to assemble and provide some good documentation on what you’re assembling.

And when you’re done you can talk to people all over the world with what you made!

Not a particularly helpful comment but I struggled with this kinda thing until switching to Node Red. It made complex things much easier to get working.

Man I went to the drive through after work one day, got a few things, and holy shit how is it almost $30?!

Unfortunately these days to get the old prices you have to use their app. Fortunately (at least for me) it works pretty well and it might actually be better value than it used to be.