From: dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com [mailto:dstar_digi...@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Daron Wilson Sent: Sunday, July 12, 2009 12:10 AM To: dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com Subject: RE: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Re: new to the group
** that is completely wrong. Do you have a service monitor I don't fix TVs by placing the Integrated Circuits. I don't fix radios by replacing them either. Most amateurs don't have service monitors anyway. I don't necessarily even think about replacing the switching board in the repeater. That's pretty much the same with most modern communication systems. You don't see the Cellular folks out there with basic service monitors trying to fix things. You don't see it with P25 systems. That doesn't mean that they aren't reliable. ** the difference is likely terrain. I can easily work my VHF dstar repeater 80+ miles out when in a nice spot with virtually LOS to the hilltop. However, come back 20 miles away behind some big mountains and trees, and it doesn't work. So what's the problem, can you not hear the repeater, or can it not hear you? If the gateway is down, I can talk to ALL of the local users, which is often the primary target for data communications anyway. ** Yup, but that isn't a link. The original post claimed he could talk to everyone 'over the links' even though the gateway was down. Okay, I have no idea what you are referring to, but I DO have data communications if the Internet is down! ** So what you are telling me.is that while a voice net is fully functioning and you are not part of it, you are monitoring it, you can transmit data to send email and the like with the internet connectivity down and all this without disrupting the voice net? Not possible my friend. Yup, yep, I can do it. That's one reason why a number of systems have more than one module. Voice on 144 and data on 440 simultaneously. Works pretty much like APRS and a voice net. ** please help me understand, shoot me to someone who is doing any of the above? They're doing it down in Orlando and Pete was testing/demonstrating some of it at Hamcom. It's not widespread today, the capabilities are just being made available. We have an ID-1 on the same site, we've pushed it 70+ miles in testing.but it won't go 8 miles to our control ops house because..there is no line of sight. Small violins are playing.... You aren't the only location in the US with mountains. And indeed maybe D-STAR coverage bites around your mountains. But just because you have mountains doesn't mean that it doesn't work anywhere else. We've got some pretty good mountains here in Georgia, maybe not 14k, but D-STAR does work through and around them. ** I'd love to see this in practice, after watching and listening to the packet reliability needed to keep the stream stable, I'm in awe. I'll do my part and research these folks. Seems like if it was that easy we'd all have much better luck with the connectivity. I've only got one installation to base it on, and that was nowhere near as forgiving as you are explaining. Furthermore, there was no internet access anywhere in our area when we were out of services. As I said, there's a lot of people that have talked on the KJ4BDF repeater when it was portable over a cellular connection. ** yes..and all that hinges on a local (VERY LOCAL ON 1.2 gHz) infrastructure that is operating. Two years ago, we were out of power, land line telephone, internet and cellular service for almost 3 days on the North Oregon Coast. Guess what, we shot hundreds of winlink messages out. If we had already setup the Dstar VHF with gateway then, it would have been useless as we had no internet for the gateway. The nearest hilltop with internet still working was far too far away to support 1.2 gHz signals. Again, I never suggested removing anything from the toolbag. Maybe a little bit of prior planning on your region's part would have been prudent. Sounds like you might have some single link access into your area. A couple of sat phones and sat Internet devices certainly would have been useful. I hope that you didn't solely rely on Winlink. ** My point has been, and remains, that while this coverage can easily be expected and utilized in many terrains..it is not the case in many others. The folks that seem to be 'selling' the Dstar solution as so much better than analog seem to be in areas where line of sight access to the repeater gives them reasonably good signals and throughput. Please understand. that dog won't hunt in our terrain. We've tried, we know what works and what doesn't work, and it is different from what may work in big flat states. The folks down in LA, San Diego, and Colorado seems to have taught the dog how to hunt. They've got some pretty big hills down there. They've got some folks doing amazing commutes on 1.2 GHz. We've got some folks doing some pretty long distance runs on 1.2 here in Georgia also. I've never really heard anyone say that "D-STAR does so much better than analog" most of the folks I hear say that the coverage is similar, sometimes more, sometimes less. There have been demonstrated situations where D-STAR coverage is dramatically more, and I'm sure a number that are dramatically less. The D-STAR blue pill that you refer to, isn't the case for many other people. D-STAR has many facets. Many of these have a lot of development to go. It's a moving target. An Internet connection can give D-STAR a lot of capabilities, but the lack of a Internet connection doesn't take everything away. D-STAR isn't going to solve all problems, it's not here to replace anything. But as it is today, it CAN give us a lot of capabilities that we don't have currently. Ed WA4YIH [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
