Cyclone Amateur Radio Club

ICARUS

History:

ICARUS was started as a Senior Design project by several students, headed up by Mike Lenth, N5UYD. ICARUS has gone through many different versions, and ended up being a cross-band UHF <-> HF repeater system. The intent was to have a localized HF transciever and allow access by many local hams to minimize the cost and space of each amateur buying and housing their own equipment. This would especially be useful to hams on campus, where getting to the club station would not always be feasable or being able to operate HF from their dorm rooms. The original project was plagued with problems (server being hacked, lack of funding, etc) and subsequently was never really able to take off or work correctly.

Back To Basics:

Over the course of discussions of getting ICARUS back up on the air, it seems that the best approach is to start from scratch, due to the overall unknown nature of the hardware and lack of documentation found. With the uprising popularity of VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) for voice communication through the Internet, all the fancy interface hardware the original design had will be unnessecary, as all the system will need is a CI-V interface for controlling the IC-746 and a soundcard interface for the audio handling. That's it! That's why we're calling this approach the "Back to Basics" approach. Most hams, if wan We decided to use this approach rather than implement the crossband repeater for many reasons: 1) it's hard on the repeater transmitting 100% of the time 2)it's more likely to be implemented in other amateur stations (we're looking to perhaps release our findings and/or software to the amateur radio community for enhancements and collaboration once working) and 3) the original Radius 1225 440 repeater was stolen from the Coover penthouse, therefore unable to be re-used).

Plan of Action:

In order for ICARUS to live once again, several things need to happen:

Fix antennas/mast
Compile nessecary hardware
Choose Software
Install hardware

   Fixing antennas: Last fall, there was some straightline winds that blew threw campus and caused a reported $150,000 dollars of damage to the campus. At that time, the winds bent the mast on the Coover Hall. However, the way the mast is bent, it has given us headaches trying to get it back down to replace. Right now, we are trying to either see if FP&M has a cherry picker or crane that can lift the mast out, or perhaps coordinate a mast cutting and extraction party. After we get the mast down, it will be a simple matter of re-installing the mast and antennas again.
   Compiling Hardware: In order to interface the IC-746 to the computer, a CI-V interface for radio control and a soundcard interface for interfacing to the VoIP software. Right now, these interfaces are being constructed, as soon as we get the PC boards made, we should have 3 identical interfaces. One for the ICARUS system, one for the ICARUS backup in the Friley shack and one for the IC-746 in the shack for regular use.
   Software: In following with the "back to basics" theme, we're going to start out with using off-the-shelf programs. Eventually we'd like to go for a bundled "all-in-one" software package that would incorporate the radio control and VoIP software and include built-in authentication and security, much like the current EchoLink software.
   Installation: After we get the necessary hardware and software to get ICARUS back up and running, we will be re-installing everything into the Coover penthouse, where testing will be started. Once proof-of-concept is proven, further testing and upgrades will be put in motion.