Bill, Shaw, others who may have answers: You request abuse of the node, so I just did my best, monopolizing it for about an hour to join a net on the Japan reflector. I noticed a couple of things I had not heard on IRLP operation before: 1. There appeared to be a pretty aggressive time out alligator. I'm not sure where the timer in question is, at K6TZ or on the remote node, which was a complex of IRLP, WIRES, and patched in HF. It was as short as 30 sec or as long as a minute or more. Audio simply stops and a second later the carrier drops but without the "beebeeboop" remote courtesy tone. I was able to key TZ, but it did not relay any remote audio until the timer (wherever it is) was reset by the transmitting station standing by. My question, then, is how is the timer configured locally? 2. Probably related to #1: periodically, a local announcement, "3, 30 seconds received" comes on and covers up the remote audio. I was unable to discern a relation between actual length of remote transmission prior to hearing this announcement, or the dropping of the carrier after the announcement. Can you clarify this one, too?
Great work in keeping the repeater and the IRLP node up. TNX & 73 de Paul