David Pyefinch wrote: > We have one Digital Repeater in the home town of Ottawa, and after initial > emails from the local repeater owner I tried to see if I could get this new > toy to work. So far not so lucky, not sure if I am out of range or just do > not have the HT configured properly. I guess I will have to wait for some > snow fall and put that J Pole up on the roof that been sitting in the shack > for 2 years Hi Hi.
Are there any analog repeaters co-located with the D-STAR? If you could try one of those, you'd know the coverage issue (if any). > Anyways on to my point. I kind of expected that from the end user point of > view I would be able to turn on the HT, Tune in the repeater and key the rig > and talk to the world. Not so simple it seems from where I am sitting. Not > sure if that is as simple as one can make it or not. Or if all the bells and > whistles are making this D-Star an overly complex operation. Definitely not the correct impression. D-STAR has a learning curve that's not super-steep for just talking on the local repeater (put in your callsign and the repeater's callsign in RPT1 and YourCall fields, respectively), but it's not "plug and play". > I will try playing a little more when I have some time, but since I spend > most of my time away from home and sitting in some Hotel I wonder if the > Dongle is the way I should be heading. Interesting observation. The dongle does seem to work pretty well, from those that have them. (I do not.) > Still It's great to see new technology making it's way to our hobby, and > hopefully we will see Yeasu and Kenwood get on board as well. But not with > three different non compatible offerings. The latter is far more likely in Japanese business than the former. Nate WY0X
