You've got to break the chicken and egg concepts. Not every person in your club has to have a D-STAR radio. And few will buy one if there aren't any local repeaters.
What I would recommend is thinking about making your club a leader in technology, not a follower. It helps out membership and can reinvigorate clubs, especially if excitement at the club meeting is when it adjourns. But the main thing is that someone has to get out and champion D-STAR's use. From the movie, If you don't build it, they don't know where to go. I and a few others have championed D-STAR here in Georgia and the Southeast for a few years. The first year was hard. There were all of the naysayers who complained about everything, "it's not real radio", "it's not reliable", "its proprietary", etc., etc. But you just have to keep chugging forward, showing progression along the way. At our local technology show (GARSFesT) this past weekend, I was quite surprised at the conversations and responses that we were getting. The anti-D-STAR forces were very small (essentially only the anti-everything folks) and I got one comment from a gentleman that stated that he liked D-STAR, because he could always find someone to talk to, unlike the local club FM repeater to which no ever listens. That's a BIG change from 2 years ago. D-STAR does a good job of interesting the technical and non-technical people. The non-techies can find people to talk to, from local to the other side of the earth. The techies have a lot to play with. D-STAR, unlike FM has significant growth opportunities. There's still a LOT of development to do. And a lot of it is coming from within the Amateur Community, not the manufacturers. DVDongle, DV Access Point, Hotspots, non-Icom repeaters, D-RATS, there are MANY areas that just aren't being addressed yet. So ask your club if they want to be known as the leaders on Long Island, or "just another club" The opportunity is there. Even if you buy the Icom gear, it ain't that expensive. Get invigorated! Ed WA4YIH From: dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com [mailto:dstar_digi...@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of ka2ugz Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 11:20 AM To: dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com Subject: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Re: Purchasing a Node Adapter Thanks for the feedback Ed. For some reason, maybe terrain of the north shore of Long Island, it is easier to get to K2DIG than W1NLK from the base antenna. Maybe the line of sight to NYC is along the south shore which has comparitavely low elevation. Our investigation into D-Star a few years back was to spark some use of the 70cm frequencies. To get that use, we would be making the Icom equipment investment and everyone in the club would need to buy a radio. So in total, the investment for the club is steep and we would not really know if there would be an appreciable increase in repeater activity. There are much larger clubs on Long Island with bigger budgets that have not taken the "plunge" into D-Star and we have wondered why. >From what I saw demonstrated last weekend, using the node adapter with an old >laptop, two FM-N radios and a duplexer was indeed a repeater pointed to a >reflector. I believe that anyone with a D-Star radio could listen in to both >sides of the conversation through this hot-spot repeater... did I >mis-understand what I saw?
