EchoLink under Ubuntu Hardy Heron

First, the news–I received my vanity callsign, KT4B, replacing my old KE0OY.  KT4B was my late father’s callsign, so I had the inside track.  Second, my sister Betty is now licensed as KC2TZO with a general class license.  That brings us back to 4 ham radio operators in the immediate family, my brother N3AU, mother WB7OIU, myself and my sister.

I wanted to talk to her on the radio, so to speak, and since she’s working a hand held 2 meter rig in an apartment in New York, and I’m in Florida without radios at the moment, I needed an alternative.  My brother’s EchoLink station provided the answer.  If I could get things hooked up, we would be able to have a full family net the day after my sister received her license.

Unfortunately, the machine on which I had previously used EchoLink is now broken, and my only machine with the right audio equipment, including microphone, is my Ubuntu box, which I use for all my work activities.

I looked at alternatives, such as Qtel, but finally simply set up EchoLink under Wine.  The audio test said the audio wasn’t working, but in fact it did work.  My second problem was the callsign change.  I thought I was going to have to go through the validation process again, but it turns out that EchoLink.org has a very efficient way to handle change of callsign.  All I had to do after setting up with my new callsign was enter the old one along with my old password, and in seconds I was validated under the new callsign.

I was also concerned that this audio system is not a communication style microphone or headsets, but rather a recording system.  I’ve had considerable trouble with sound under Hardy Heron, but now have it generally working well to record my podcast.  So I was working with a microphone running through a sound board along with speakers.

As it turns out I had no problems with the audio, and all my family members–normally honest people–reported excellent audio on their end.  I had seen some complaints about EchoLink not working with Wine under Hardy Heron, but mine did with no trouble.