At 10:20 AM 6/27/2008, you wrote: >As far as communications outside of the local area - we have HF rigs >in our EOC and lots of local volunteers who are willing to show up >with HF capabilities as needed.
You might be surprised at how out of area communications can be used. The VoIP WX Net offers a few examples, which would also translate well into the D-STAR world as well. Firstly, need a 24x7 NCO schedule? Easy, outsource the role, train up some hams around the world. I am one such NCO, usually heard in the hours 2-8AM (US EDT) during hurricanes. Secondly, HF doesn't always go where you want it to. There may not be a path between the affected area and where information needs to go. This is quite common for hurricanes in the Carribean or Mexico. We have used (good old fashioned manual) HF relays from the affected area to an intermediate station who had propagation in their favour, as well as Echolink/IRLP. From there, it's direct to VoIP NCO and/or the NHC itself - Bingo! Another piece of traffic that wouldn't have otherwise been passed. >The general feeling is that if the disaster is big enough to take >down wide area public communications carriers we wouldn't count on >the internet or any internet linked system - D-Star or otherwise - >plus - there are sat phones for communications with FEMA. You might be surprised. Our experience is that the repeaters themselves are the most vulnerable during hurricanes, and by far the most common mode of failure is power failure at the site. Sites which have emergency power often remain on air (and on the Internet) during a hurricane. A suitably hardent D-STAR node is likely to be useful during an emergency as well. As significant parts of the US are already going D-STAR for SKYWARN nets, I will be keeping my Dongle on standby, to take traffic from those nets during hurricanes. >It's just a matter of being prepared. > >As I said earlier, time will tell and D-Star as well as other >amateur communications modes will keep evolving - the journey is >where the fun is - I simply have pointed out that acceptance of the >world-wide-routed D-Star model isn't universal. I'm sure there will be changes. However, D-STAR avoids the worst issues we have on FM/VoIP, namely misconfigured nodes and audio levels. There are no tails or CWIDs on D-STAR, and audio levels are much more consistent across the network. There goes 80% of our problems. The next 15% is those stations that just blast away with long CQ calls. The routed model of D-STAR does encourage this, because the routed model doesn't allow you to listen for traffic before hitting the PTT, and if you're lucky to get in between other traffic, you have no idea. A good Net Control can help here, of course. But then again, Net Control may not be operating from the system receiving the call. The routed design of D-STAR's traditional mode of operation leads to many "uncertain states" across the network and a lot of "blind operating". It would be nice to be able to, for instance, turn off routing and still be able to link to reflectors for wide area nets. It's a new system and there's still teething issues we need to work on. :) 73 de VK3JED http://vkradio.com
