We have found that several digipeaters in our area that have SSIDs can be used for digipeating, if the total number of characters does not exceed a count of 7, for example; WM3M-10 and N3XL-10 work fine for digipeating, but W3AAC-10 does not. The advantage of using regular RMS stations for digipeating is that they are up 24x7 and easy to use for EMCOMM purposes, by that fact. So the question is, is it a 7 character limit that restricts digipeating, or does the limit actually have something to do with SSIDs, other than the fact that SSIDs tend to lengthen the character count beyond 7. If the problem is strictly character count, we may be able to shorten some of the -10 SSIDs to -9 and get them down to the limit of 7, making them usable as digipeaters.
73, Bill N3XL.
Our radio club has recently installed a mountain top VARA-FM digipeater ,,, eight digits- KF0OIC-1. VarAC can digipeat when connecting to another station. What we cannot do, and would like to do, is use the digipeater when BROADCAST messages are being sent.
Is there a reason VarAC cannot use a digipeater with a SSID when BROADCAST messages are used?
-Randy, W4IFI
Actually the character count up to 8 works OK for digipeating. So the problem is actually for digipeating through RMS stations with 9 or more characters, but the same principle applies irt changing the SSID from 10 to 9 thus saving one character. Sorry if I caused a bunch of confusion with the 7.