It is definitely not silly, because it legally viable solution to station identification.
Your statement is silly because it's just as easy for me to do the same thing on voice. Callsigns are hijacked on voice all the time. Just because "it can be done some other way" doesn't mean that standard and practices shouldn't be developed to support a feature. For D-STAR, the standard, as specified in the protocol is for the field to contain your callsign. If you stick to the specifics of the protocol, then if you put something besides your callsign in the field, then it wouldn't be in accordance with the protocol. If it isn't in accordance with the protocol, then you will need to follow the requirements of utilization of a non-published protocol. This would require, among other things, that the station identification be done in a standard protocol such as FM or CW. (For US rules) So I guess if you want to get down to nitpicking, if the callsign is not in the field then you need to make sure to switch your radio to FM and identify appropriately. Ed WA4YIH From: dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com [mailto:dstar_digi...@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Nate Duehr Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2009 12:17 PM To: dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com Subject: RE: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Tactical Call indication Relying on having a CALLSIGN in that field is silly in the extreme. It's nice if everyone does it, but the field itself and the technology really don't "care" what's in the rigs at all. It's just an alphanumeric field. No amount of wishful thinking will stop someone from copy-catting a callsign to gain access to routing... eventually. Nate WY0X -- Nate Duehr n...@natetech.com<mailto:nate%40natetech.com> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
