btwlgw wrote: > What _does_ concern me: > > a) cost for users($900 for a dual-band, dual-receive D-Star 2820? c'mon!)
Seen what a set of golf clubs costs lately? Or a pair of snow skis? (I could say "c'mon" right back to anyone who says a ham rig that does what these rigs do is "expensive". They're really not.) > b) cost for repeater equipment (The small clubs in this area would > find the hardware to be impossibly expensive) This I agree with. Icom's pricing for the repeaters is prohibitively high and hurts the uptake of this technology. With the repeaters being basically "mobiles in a box" and not really REPEATER technology... they need to either a) lower prices or b) raise the quality of the repeaters. > c) coverage (I live in a rural area, as do all of my ham friends) Do you even have analog repeater coverage? Putting a D-STAR repeater at the same location as the analog will result in similar coverage, overall. > d) Only one brand of radio to choose from (the marketing/technical > reasons don't matter to me- bottom line is only one brand of radio to > choose from) This one's simple -- either you're going to buy into the current working system or you're going to wait for another manufacturer to build one. I don't see Yaesu or Kenwood taking a "leader" position on this for many years to come. D-STAR has enough interest that the most you're going to lose is the cost differential between a new and an old rig, if you sell it. The rigs are all FINE analog rigs in their own rite. > On it's face, D-Star is a great thing. I do know all of the advantages > and think they are fantastic. Unfortunately, unless you live in a > reasonably urban area with a good density of affluent users, good > D-Star coverage will be a long time coming. This will continue to be true until folks in rural areas have enough interest to band together and build a shared cost system. There have been (in the past) great deals from Icom with free repeaters if a group would dedicate to buying enough user rigs for Icom to only lose a little money on the deal. The deals are getting harder to come by now. > Earlier this week I was gung-ho for getting a D-star radio. It just > took me a few days to analyze the disadvantages and to realize that an > analog APRS radio would be a much better choice for me. I can respect that decision in your shoes. You need a consortium of hams who are interested enough to build a local repeater before having the rig is of as much value as it is in other areas. If you don't have the local interest to share the costs of the new repeater system, you're probably right... for now. :-) Nate WY0X
