I'll answer what I think I can Ken, and chop the rest... others can reply to your original message.
ken cleaver wrote: > Does it seem like there is significant growth in dstar? Are there other > manufacturers adopting? > > [ED - http://www.dstarusers.org/dsm_growth.html > <http://www.dstarusers.org/dsm_growth.html> ] That's interesting -- around 16:00 UTC it started DOWN, and stopped at around 0:00 UTC? "Max 801 Average 757 Current 705 " Was that the Dayton systems going "bye-bye" after the show? > How is the IC-92AD radio? I have been running a VX-5 radio for a while. There was a discussion of multiple rigs here on the list a while back, but a number of folks here have IC-92ADs... they bought them before the repeater went up, played with voice/data on simplex. Then the repeater went up, and we're all completely hooked... most of us were back at the store within weeks, buying ID-800Hs for mobile use. > Do you set the digital call sign squelch with your ID for people calling > you? Or with others you expect to be calling? Very few people are using any of the two digital squelch types around here yet. I suspect looking them over, the more popular one will be the callsign-based one, and only when you "only want to hear calls for your station"... my wife, for example, who's a ham, has expressed interest in having a memory channel for "normal" listening, and one that turns on the callsign-based squelch so she'll only be "bothered" if one of us calls her directly. > Is the range better or worse with dstar then the analog 2m/70cm? That's a huge debate. The real answer is "it depends". Like anything new, digital is completely different. Mark N5RFX recently posted this article that covers it QUICKLY (leaving out the more complex problems like digital multipath, etc...) and fairly accurately by measuring receiver "sensitivity": ftp://ftp.tapr.org/psr/psr105.pdf See page 4 and 5. We would agree here, that you gain that "extra 17db" of no noise, no flutter, no problems, and then the coverage just drops off... just like one would expect from something fully digital. Honestly, we can't believe the coverage from our low test site here in Colorado... and we can't wait to get the repeater another couple of thousand feet higher! > Is there any background noise? Or is it digital clear? Whatever the mic pics up... you can still hear "road noise" on a mobile, but it's subdued through most of the Icom mics (they still did a decent job on the noise canceling mics themselves) and "digital clear"... well, yes... if someone's fully in the repeater. They drive through a "dead spot" where even an analog repeater would fall out, and they're going to do what is being nicknamed... "R2-D2" (like the robot noises in Star Wars), "Going Digital", or "Garbled". > Does audio disappear completely when on the fringe? Kinda. Not always. If the repeater loses frame sync on the signal, it sometimes sends some really weird stuff on for a second or so. Remember also your LOCAL receiver can lose the signal. (For example... transmit on another high power UHF rig on another nearby antenna -- causing standard RF receiver desense -- to your Icom rig, and the repeater itself will "garble out" on your end, but not for others listening in. You can also sometimes "hear" the forward error correction and minor amounts of lost packets in the stream... it makes the person sound a tiny bit "fuzzy" for a short period of time. Sometimes -- you can't quite tell which end had the problem, too... of course. We've only been up and on the air a couple of weeks, but it seems everyone is taking these funny noises in stride... if you happen to put your D-STAR repeater where other analog repeaters are and can "correlate" the coverage, you'll find that where the analog is generally noisy, but still copyable, the D-STAR will be rock solid for voice. The inter-mixed low speed data channel at 1200 bps is not error corrected and often looks worse than the voice. We're still playing with the differences in "voice coverage" versus "data coverage" a little bit. If you are going for the ultimate in weak-signal copy, analog still wins... but most people aren't going to stick around and listen to a QSO that nasty on analog repeaters anyway... > Since the radio does ident do you need to ident verbally? Does it display > who is currently transmitting? Remember there are multiple countries and rules. Best practice is always to continue to use your callsign in voice. However, at least here in the U.S. folks are pretty convinced that not voice IDing as long as the rig has the correct callsign in it, isn't necessary. > Can you open a link and listen to other repeaters? Or can you just open it > for a specific call sign? Linking isn't in the stock Icom Gateway, but with the addition by the local Gateway admin of the DPlus software, linking to another repeater so that ALL traffic on either one goes back and forth, and/or linking to one of the new "Reflectors" where multiple Gateway-equipped repeaters can link up, is possible. Additionally, remember that because it requires Internet at the repeater site to have a Gateway, there are quite a few D-STAR repeaters out there that are NOT Gateway-equipped. Check in your local area first, before thinking you'll be able to get out to the world. > When transmitting data, if data is lost does it automatically do a > retransmit? No. The radios send low-speed data non-error-corrected. But... applications written to talk OVER that half-duplex 1200 bps data pipe can (and have started to) implement their own "retry" system and layer. > On the last heard site http://www.dstarusers.org/lastheard.php > <http://www.dstarusers.org/lastheard.php> Is that the > last time they used the repeater, or used it as a gateway? The last time they transmitted on that repeater with the local repeater's Gateway callsign in the RPT2 field of their rig. (If you don't route to the Gateway -- if you have one -- DV Dongle users connected to your Gateway don't hear you, etc. It's becoming commonplace for folks to have their "default" settings as: UR: CQCQCQ RPT1: [Local repeater Callsign and port in eighth character field.] RPT2" [Local repeater Callsign and Gateway "G" in eighth character field.] Your: Their own callsign. > Also on last heard there is a letter after the reporting node, either a B or > a C. What does that letter mean? Generally... A = 1.2 GHz B = UHF C = VHF Nate WY0X
