Derby Raynet on Derby Raynet - M0YDY

Ashgate High Peak Trail sponsored walk 2026

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday 12 of our members turned out to support the 17 mile Ashgate Hospice High Peak Trail charity walk. We provided event communications over the 17 mile stretch of the High Peak Trail.

Another DMR data and audio offline integration update

Sat, 07 Feb 2026 08:00:00 +0000

On our offline DMR logging, tracking and recording project there has been further cleaning of the software and a small architecture change over the last month, slightly delayed due to dependency changes in the app used to view the data.

Derby Raynet now on Facebook

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 15:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce that Derby Raynet now has a public Facebook group. This is part of our push to attract new members, and to make public announcements easier to share.

First meeting of 2026

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Tonight we held our first club meeting of 2026 at the museum. Topics discussed included:

Plans to encourage new members who are able to either help behind the scenes, or support at events.
Non-charity events we could take part in such as Museums on-the-air.
Next steps to purchase a second DMR repeater that can be linked to our existing repeater in order to improve coverage at our annual High Peak Trail walk.

DMR data and audio offline integration update

Sat, 20 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

As mentioned before we have been working to fully integrate DMR position, messaging and audio into a single logging solution for Derby Raynet Control to use during events without needing any complex infrastructure or being dependent on the Internet.

Since the last update we have overcome most of our issues and are now working on reliability and scaling improvements.

Previously we could “listen” to the repeater over RF at control and decode the data side of DMR (messages, position reports and on air caller information), we have recently made progress in a number of areas in order to add audio recording and searching capability.

DMR tracking update

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 16:13:00 +0100

Using Digital APRS data to find coverage problems

During the Ashgate Sparkle event last month our Sweep walker was sending position beacons at a fixed interval over our portable DMR repeater, with this data being recorded at control.

Since these position reports where received on our regular repeater channel instead of via a different mode and band we can use this as a repeater coverage indicator. Using a new update to the Event Comms application we have been able to generate real coverage stats for our repeaters coverage.

Ashgate Hospice Sparkle charity walk 2025

Wed, 25 Jun 2025 16:13:00 +0100

Derby Raynet again supported Ashgate Hospice with their very popular Sparkle Walk. This is always an interesting event with it involving a large number of participants and being overnight.

Due to the road closures we arrived at about 17:00 on the Saturday, and left a little before 03:00 the following morning.

There was a record number of walkers this year with 3500 all starting at the same time.

DMR messaging and positions without a network

Sun, 25 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Derby Raynet has been using a DMR repeater for a few events now. This has improved clarity in noisy control environments and having a second time slot available when more privacy is required is a great advantage. However, we have not been making use of the additional digital features available.

It is common to share APRS like information (position and SMS style messages) over Internet linked DMR repeaters through one of the networks. The networks convert this data, and send it to APRS-IS, which can then be easily viewed on a map. For emergency scenarios or charity events in isolated areas we aim to create our own independent networks to provide redundancy when possible, so try to avoid relying on this.

About Derby Raynet

Mon, 12 May 2025 22:28:43 +0100

Derby Raynet is a group of volunteers who give their time, experience and equipment to provide communication support for charity and community events and, if required, to support emergenicies where everyday communications systems, e.g. mobile phones, are unavailable or unreliable.

The group mainly consists of Radio Amateurs, allowing us to provide independent and resilient communication infrastructure in parallel with Push to Talk cellular radios, mobile phones and the Internet. Capabilities that we field include:

Get help from Derby Raynet

Mon, 12 May 2025 22:28:43 +0100

We are a group that always look forward to a good challenge, and hope to be able to assist you whether as part of your emergency planning, or at charity or community events.

We don’t just provide equipment - instead we provide skilled people with reliable communication infrastructure, as well as a command and control approach to ensure messages are delivered accurately.

Please do contact us using the form below for advice as we have gained planning experience over this time covering many different types of events and incidents.

Get Involved

Mon, 12 May 2025 22:28:43 +0100

The support we offer to charities is very resource intensive, i.e. we need people to be able to do what we do.

If you would like to be involved, and improve your communication, planning and organisation skills, please do contact us. You don’t need to be a licensed Radio Amateur - we can still find jobs for you, or help you gain your licence.

We are also able to provide assistance with taking the Foundation Amateur Radio online test, which is a great way into the hobby for anyone without radio or electronics experience.

Supporting Events

Mon, 12 May 2025 22:28:43 +0100

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of events we are asked to support has dropped; therefore we are keen to support new events. If you would like our assistance, please get in contact or drop in to one of our club nights.

We have provided communications plus command and control support (with operators) for a number of charities over the past years including:

We are working with local agencies (User Services) in the Derby area to provide communications support when required.

New public website created

Mon, 12 May 2025 22:04:18 +0100

As part of our efforts to gain new members we have created this new website to tell people who we are, and what we do.

If you would like to find out more about what you see here then contact us via the About page. We are happy to help in many ways including providing communications for local charities, as well as helping people get involved with Amateur Radio.

Did you know that Amateur Radio is not just for talking to people around the world with big aerials, but is also a great means to provide backups comms in areas with patchy mobile phone signals, such as when walking or for charity events in the Peak District. The Foundation licenses are an ideal entry into Amateur Radio for people with no radio experience.

Active Projects

Mon, 12 May 2025 22:03:58 +0100

As a group, we are interested in many areas centred around communications, these include:

Maintenance of our control trailer. Recently we stripped it, and re-wired everything. This has been very successful, and we are now considering further improvements such as solar panels to charge the on-board batteries.

We have been trialing a new piece of software which allows planned events to be fully defined in advance with routes, maps and operators, and then used for logging, time recording, DMR message logging, and position reports via APRS or DMR. This wil be made available in the Play Store when we consider it as stable.

Ashgate High Peak Trail sponsored walk 2025

Sun, 23 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

On behalf of Ashgate Hospice we provided communication links between the finish area and most checkpoints along a 17 mile section of the High Peak Trail.

As usual there were three walks of 3.5, 11 and 17 miles, each with bus drop-offs along the route.

During the event we used our new logging software again, this time on a Chromebook and using DMR APRS in addition to the previously trialed Analogue APRS, we successfully followed our 11 mile sweep around most of the course and as this was all via our repeater we gained some very useful repeater coverage information.

Ashgate Hospice Sparkle charity walk 2024

Sun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Ashgate Hospice Sparkle walk is a well known Charity event in Chesterfield with nearly 3000 walkers going through Chesterfield finishing in the early hours of the morning.

This event requires a lot of coordination with multiple road closures, 61 checkpoints split into 5 zones, and a lot of walkers, we successfully provided all communication and coordination during the event from our newly refurbished trailer.

During this event we had our first trial of an all digital integrated planning, logging and tracking system. A few bugs were identified, but the value was quickly seen, Ashgate officials was impressed with the integrated APRS tracking of our sweep walker.