Our local repeater in Hilversum, PI2NOS is undergoing some real exciting changes at the moment. Due to regulations this is one of the 70cm repeaters that is not bound to regional reach. That means it may be capable to receive and transmit in the whole country. Traditionally PI2NOS is situated in Hilversum with it’s antenna’s on a broadcast mast at 200 meters (656 feet) above sea level. It has a transmit range of almost all of The Netherlands. Receive range is a little bit smaller, especially of little local signals like hand helds. This is why the operators of the repeater adapted diversity to place more receivers for the repeater on high locations in the country. At the moment there are extra receivers in Utrecht, Amsterdam, Apeldoorn and Zierikzee. When you look at the map of The Netherlands, you’ll see that’s a nice circle around the center. There are plans to widen that circle and place even more receivers. There are plans to use extra transmitters to expand the reach of the repeater to the far ends of the country.

Mischa PA1OKZ, one of the operators of PI2NOS asked me if I want to develop a webpage to get a live view of the receiver status (for instance, which receiver is active at the moment). I did some coordination with Rob PE1CHL, the programmer of the repeater software of PI2NOS. Rob did write some excellent piece of code that is readable with JQuery on the client side. Rob did write a piece of example code to show how it works. Since Rob and me were talking about this subject on the repeater, more people who are able to code, listen in. Like René PC7X, Edwin PE1NMB and Rolf PE1PTP. In no-time they wrote excellent clients that plot the various receivers on a map.
Thereafter my mailbox exploded with mails from these guys. Day and night they are coding and exchange idea’s via mail. In the meantime the various pages become more and more beautiful and the users of the repeater more enthusiast.
These developments are great, many people are putting in their time and effort to benefit the greater good. In the meantime I’m designing a new website for this repeater which will hold the receiver map as well.