On May 8, 2010, at 3:54 AM, J. Moen wrote: > My experience with D-Star repeaters is they give me a bit more range than > analog FM, as long as there's no multipath. I can work a D-Star repeater on > top of Mt. Diablo in northern California from Dixon with my 91AD running less > than 5 watts with an HT -- this is over 40 miles. In the greater San > Francisco Bay Area, we have six D-Star repeaters I'm aware of, not counting > ones north of the Bay, or over in Sacramento. They all work.
Note: Mt. Diablo has serious add-on filtering and a pre-amp custom configured for the receiver/frequency/noise floor at that site, last I heard. > D-Star flat out works. If you live somewhere where it doesn't, that only > shows that those repeater operators are not achieving what almost all other > D-Star repeaters are doing. You should refrain from drawing a line through > your one data point. Agreed, but I'd be curious where you get your data about what "all other D-STAR repeaters are doing"... Jim? I think SoCal has a higher percentage of D-STAR systems that have add-on preamps, final amplifiers, and other accoutrements than most of the rest of the country... a sign of the economies of scale you guys have with so many active hams out there... or something. We should do a poll of the Gateway/system operators... if we could find all of them, and see how many have already... or have plans to... add pre-amps on receive, additional filtering, upgraded internal cabling, high power final amps, etc... W0CDS does NOT have any of these, due to budgetary constraints. We cheated a bit and put it up 5000' higher than the average terrain which has been a blessing and a curse. It's down again, awaiting someone to go visit it with a snow-cat... because we apparently aren't going to have a season called "Spring" here in the Colorado Front Range, this year. ;-) -- Nate Duehr, WY0X n...@natetech.com
