N0AGI’s website returns in draft form

Sometime today, Nagendra Punyamurthula AKA Nagi (NØAGI’s) website returned after being down a little more than 5 days, (since this last Saturday). His website apparently was still available early Saturday morning, January 28th and was then offline sometime shortly after the bi-weekly DMR morning breakfast. The Minnesota Statewide Talk-Group 3127 was noted to be unavailable between several repeater sites through the day with several users attempting to discover what was actually happening. Around 6pm James Kantor, KCØARX posted an email to a smaller Google mailing list titled the “MNDMR Leadership Team” (mndmrlt@googlegroups.com) announcing a new cBridge would be connecting Repeaters in KC0ARX-Saint Cloud, N0AGI-Medina, N0AGI-Buck Hill, N0AGI-Faribault, KD0YRF-Rochester and KC0CAP-Litchfield. Furthermore it was their intention to remove Minnesota Statewide Talk-Group 3127 on all these repeaters with an exception for Rochester for the reason of the Mayo Clinic Health System. This announcement then provided some insight into all of the technical problems reported through out the day. It was intentional to break off these repeaters from the original cBridge and create a new network and to exclude not only the Statewide talkgroup, but actually begin filtering or blocking/excluding specific radio ID numbers. The email simply says “Members that have been identified as trying to be disruptive” will be blocked so that “This will allow us to have a friendly, safe and clean  system”. Finally the email says they are not accepting new repeaters to their new network due to technical reasons but you could apply via email if you wanted “to be adopted” at some point in the future.

I’d like to answer a couple questions that might come up in the next few days…

Q) What’s the difference between MNDMR.NET and MinnesotaDMR.COM.

A) Nagi registered and created the original domain and website at MNDMR.NET sometime in February of 2016. Over the last year I’ve noticed a change in the content from a voice of building a community to one of protecting an asset. This is purely my impression and personal opinion. I on one occasion via telephone discussed with Nagi the inclusion of copyright statements and ownership statements on the website and learned that Nagi did feel a need to make this clear as he felt there were people out there wanting to copy his content. He stated anyone can create their own website and if they feel they can do it better, they should as long as they don’t steel his content. I don’t recall exactly when this was, but I saw a couple domain names still available and figured I’d secure them for future use. In about October, I could tell there were tensions building and I decided to begin developing some content of my own. I created the MinnesotaDMR.COM domain and site as I want to stick to Nagi’s original statement of building a community. I’ve largely kept the website to myself with only two people I’m aware of stumbling into it and registering. I promptly contacted both of them and told them the main website is at MNDMR.net. That changes today. Welcome here!

Q) What’s with the postcard and this new site?

A) I’ve wanted for the last several months to provide a workshop on building hotspot’s so you can use any talk group you want and take it portable with you using a simplex frequency. With the weekend separation of the networks and drastic coverage change for the Minnesota Statewide Talk-Group, it seemed like there was an immediate need to have just such a thing right now. I started preparing content. I contacted the hardware maker for the (Incredibly Awesome) DV-MEGA UHF radio board and ordered nearly a dozen of them to be shipped to the United States immediately. I went to the mailing list (Hosted by Google and owned by Nagi) and noted it’s now moderated and nothing has yet been announced to the greater community about the network split and in fact nothing at all had been posted since January 22nd when Nagi asked for a list of people who used his repeaters as their primary repeater. I went ahead and posted a message announcing my workshop and awaited news that my announcement was either sent or rejected. After 24 hours, it didn’t seem the mailing list was active. I located Nagi’s cell number and sent off a text asking if he would approve or if we could discuss any issues he had with it. Not sure what to expect, I merged the DMR-MARC database and the FCC database to produce a list of postal addresses and started designing a postcard to announce “OUR” new website. In the mean time, a day after my original post, Nagi did respond and asked me to send my announcement to him again in another email. (It was originally entered in the Google Groups Web Interface). With the deadline approaching for final mail pickup in Arizona, his website down and the Wednesday night Minnesota Statewide Talk-group Net starting at 7pm Central time, I took the postcards to the post office and frantically applied stamps and dropped them in the mail. The Website was down, Nagi wanted from me what I had already posted online a day earlier, No one had communicated with the larger community yet and I felt better doing something.

I WANT TO BE CLEAR, I do not want to see our community divided. I want to see us UNITED. I want this to be FUN! This site was built here to represent our inclusive community. I did not feel Nagi’s MNDMR.NET site was serving that purpose any longer. Certainly not Wednesday night when the postcards were deposited in the mail. Nagi’s site had been down for days, no emails from the mailing list reflector in nearly two weeks and no announcement from the Google groups service to the community about the network split. These actions this past week appear to have happened in a vacuum and to the exclusion of several repeater operators. The actions on Saturday appear in my opinion to be intended to divide our community. Now that Nagi’s webiste is back up, it’s including License agreements, User Terms and Conditions, more copyrights, Applications for membership or access, Rules, Regulations and Requirements, etc.

Welcome ALL to the new MinnesotaDMR.COM website.

If you would like to contribute content, please request an account. There are a few ground rules. Be kind to one another, respect others opinions, show off your “Minnesota Nice”.

73, nØnki – Eric Osterberg