Santa Claus is alive and well in South Silly-CON Valley!
For those with remote stations, or working toward such a venue like myself
seeking low latency connectivity, I just ran across the deal of the Century
which I'd like to share so you can save $$$ as well.
Last year my ISP referred me to a locally headquartered company called
AIRAYA which makes first class point to point gear with extremely low
latency (an absolute must for high-speed and SO2R contesting).
I was on that end of town earlier today, and decided to drop by AIRAYA
again to check on some new potential compatibility issues with a new
whiz-bang interface remote box for the TS-480S. These folks are very
nice, and Mike Nydam (President & CEO) graciously spent some time with me
as I explained how more Contesters are getting into remote station setups,
and why the low latency is important.
The AIRAYA package I had been looking at for eventual acquisition retails
for $1,600+ so it's not cheap. When Mike took me on a tour of the
facilities, he causually mentioned that they had received a large shipment
of the items from a sub-vendor that had a slightly different mounting
arrangement on the antennas, and that they were going to have a "SALE" to
zero out the inventory (everything else is the same...including the 2 rolls
of LMR-400 coax which are included).
When he said $799, I about fell over, and am pleased to report I left the
building as a new owner of a complete system that was one of the needed
items in my remote station plans...at a big savings!
This same AIRAYA gear can be "multi-hopped" if you don't have direct line
of site from your shack to a remote antenna site, and still realize low
latency. With one of the much larger antennas, the potential to go up to
30 miles per hop is not out of the question. In my situation, I only need
to go less than 4 miles, which my understanding is the gear will run at
20mbps/40Mhz and the latency should be well below 5ms...maybe 1 or
2ms. This stuff blows away Internet or Satellite connectivity for Contesting.
Mike said the $799 price will be officially on their website tomorrow (
http://www.airaya.com ), and the Item # of the package is:
AI108-4958-Kit-PM
But wait...there's more...
I mentioned that I might possibly need to run the remote site portion of
the gear directly off 12v vs. A/C if I decided to initially use only low
power on some deep cycle batteries. No problem...they make a small board
which converts 12v to the requisite 5v @ 2A for the system and it's only
$20. Yes, I walked out of there with one of these too!
If you have a need for multi-hops or an unusual situation, call Mike at
(408)776-2846 x203 and either he or one of his tech folks can most
assuredly help you out .
NO, I don't have any commission deal involved here. I just hope some of
you remote station folks will benefit from the this info and the $$$ to be
saved right now.
Today was another day of "Destiny" (except for my neighbors who
unfortunately had their garage burn down while I was at AIRAYA).
FYI & 73...
Rick, K6VVA
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