In August 2019, I set up an XLX reflector for D-STAR that can be accessed via personal hotspots and repeaters with internet access. The reflector is numbered XLX678 and you can view the latest activity on the reflector dashboard at: https://xlx.m0lxq.com.
To connect to XLX678, you can use the XLX, DPlus (REF), DExtra (XRF) or DCS protocols as XLX678, REF678, XRF678 or DCS678 but XLX is preferred. So, for example, if you wished to connect to module B, you would enter XLX678BL into the ‘Direct Input (UR)’ field on your radio.
Since February 2022, Peanut has been available on module B thanks to Mike, VK2AMF for the AMBE transcoding via his server.
Since September 2022, XLX678 has been hosted on a server operated by Oracle Cloud Infrastructure which is located in a large datacentre in London. The XLX protocol enables transcoding to DMR and Yaesu System Fusion reflectors too, however, at the moment this requires an AMBE hardware encoder to be directly connected to the server and I do not have direct access to it to do this. It is possible that the open source IMBE vocoder could be implemented into the XLX software at some point in the future, but for now, we have to wait!
There are 7 modules currently enabled on XLX678:
- A – International
- B – 6:30 Net (Peanut)
- C – Chat 1
- D – Chat 2
- E – Chat 3
- F – Chat 4
- G – Testing
Unlike some D-STAR reflectors, there is no echo module enabled on XLX678.
Why 678? There are a large number of reflectors and it was the most memorable number (i.e. three consecutive numbers) that was available. Interestingly, since I set up 678, a number of reflectors have been created using letters only, i.e. XLXAAA etc. A full list of the active XLX servers can be seen here.
