Running a repeater or room server

If you have rooftop access, a power source, and a few hours, you can extend the YEG mesh meaningfully. This is the single highest-leverage thing a new operator can do once their handheld is working.

Site picking

• Height beats power. A modest-power node on a 5th-floor balcony almost always out-covers a higher-power node at street level. LoRa propagation at 915 MHz is line-of-sight-ish; getting above the local clutter matters more than another 5 dB at the radio.
• Avoid putting the antenna directly next to metal HVAC, satellite dishes, or solar inverters.
• Keep the antenna at least a metre clear of ferrous mast pipe.

Power & uptime

• Mains is fine for v1. Aim for UPS-backed eventually.
• Solar: a small panel + a LiFePO₄ battery (cold-tolerant) can keep a low-power node alive through YEG winter if it gets reasonable sun. Size up for the worst week of December overcast.
• A node that's up 95% of the time beats a node that's up 30% in a slightly better location.

Channel & role

• MeshCore: run Repeater for pure store-and-forward. Run Room Server if you also want to host a named local room.
• Meshtastic: run REPEATER (not ROUTER on a handheld). Region US, LongFast, hop limit 3.

Naming your node

Use a short, recognisable name so others can identify you on the mesh — typically a yeg- prefix plus a neighbourhood / operator hint (e.g. yeg-strath-anon, yeg-oliver-VE6XYZ). Ask in the local Discord what convention is in use today.

Tell the community

Drop your node name, rough location (intersection is fine), antenna height, and uptime expectation in the YEG Discord — admins can add you to the operator roster.

Mind the spectrum

You're sharing 902–928 MHz with cordless phones, baby monitors, smart meters, weather stations, and other licence-exempt ISM users. Keep your duty cycle reasonable; see Beacon etiquette.