Bay County AREDN Meshnet Island Station Now in Panama City

Greetings HAM Operators.

I've now put the first AREDN Mesh station into operation. At the moment it's accessible via Tunnel connections. We will be bringing the "OTA" Over The Air Microwave connections online soon. So far there are only 3 of us in the Panama City area. I'm working with 2 other HAM operators to help get them up and running.
Our station is Tunnel linked to Live Oak, Fl and Warner Robins, Ga. Dave in Warner Robins helped us get up and running. We do have a WINLINK address and a VOIP Phone number. Even though it is in the Georgia prefix and under their PBX, it allows us to use our VOIP Telephones to call each other. Dave did enable the dial by Call Sign for mine. Makes it easier to dial a call sign rather than trying to remember a phone number. I have made calls from our AREDN Mesh Phone system across to the Hamshack Hotline numbers. I don't have a "HH" Hamshack Hotline number so this really opens up communications across these platforms. Yes, the Hamshack Hotline members can call across to our AREDN Mesh Phone system.

The AREDN Mesh Router/Modem is a "MicroTIC RouterBOARD" I found the one I needed on Ebay. Seller had it for $20.- OBO. I offer $15- and waited. 2 days later my offer was accepted. With the $15.- plus a little for shipping got what I needed. Next was only to "Flash" or reload the software in it with the AREDN which is on this site for download.

All in all, my goal is to set up a server here at my station with Mesh Mail, PBX, File storage, MeshChat, Streaming Video for our tower cams. This will allow others to see the "WX" Weather going on in the Panama City area especially during extremely bad weather. I welcome new stations to join us by RF or Tunnel. As I get the WINLINK Mail Server set up, I'll have a gateway for stations to send and receive mail without Internet if they are equipped or can Tunnel to a station who has the RF ability to connect to our RMS gateway and server.

There is a page here on this site that lists all the Routers that will accept and work with AREDN Firmware/Software. Also, an Ethernet switch can be a big plus when you are connecting severa devices to your AREDN Mesh Router. I have found information on how to turn "Old" retired Internet Routers into Ethernet switches. I'll post this in another topic. If someone would like to contact me on these subjects, I'm available via KV4ATV@Gmail.com  I'm also on Winlink. For stations in Florida, I monitor and am active on the Florida SARNET. It's a 70cm Band State Wide System. Do check out the Florida SARNET for more information on our SARNET.

73's for now and I'll catch you down the log.
KV4ATV  ATN-Fl State President. On The Air To Everywhere.

I do have a Raspberry Pi that I'll be devoting to the AREDN station that will be running 2/7. With the emergency backup power we've designed and now have running, it will keep our station up and running without any commercial power.