The other evening I was listening in on the Allstar network and I heard a conversation between two senior hams. One asked the other if he was going to attend an upcoming meeting of their local radio club. To my surprise, the answer came back as ” No I have finally had enough “. It made me wonder is the Allstar network for beginners.

When his friend asked him why? He replied, “It’s not a radio club anymore, it is a computer club“. I must admit that I have some degree of sympathy with the OM’s view. There is no doubt that quite a level of computer competency is required for the new digital modes, codeplugs for DMR spring to mind, but this trend is now pervasive throughout almost all facets of amateur radio.

On the face of it, the Allstar is also not exempt from this geeky image, if you follow the facebook groups and the mailing lists then you will know what I mean. There is line after line of Linux published, this can be very daunting indeed for the newcomer, I would imagine that many will be put off before they look any deeper into the medium.

I think there must be very few hams around with a complete understanding of the software behind Allstar, { And they have my deep admiration } most regulars will be like myself, ” Script Kiddies ” who cut and paste what is required and then transfer the code to their own node image file without learning very much in the process.

But the great thing about Allstar is it need not be like this, it is now very easy to get a node up and running with almost no knowledge of any computer language. So if that’s your thing you can chew the fat for as long as you like with other like-minded hams. This what my site is all about, not for the ” Uber Coders ” but for people like the OM I was listening in on to encourage them to make their first step into Allstar, hopefully on kit they have put together themselves at minimal cost.

Once have a node up and running then sure you can delve further into the world of Linux if you wish, but fascinating as this can be, it is not really necessary.

Scott Nimmo
DU9/G6OJB

Follow this link for my Simple Allstar Node page

And this link for the Hamvoip ARM-Allstar mailing list