I put up a D-Star Hotspot with a Kenwood D700 that had been sitting in the closet. and an older laptop. My out of pocket expenses were about US $130 if I recall. I wired up a cable and using a second radio, I experiemented with full duplex or repeater mode. It worked. To make it into a real repeater, I would only have to do the things anyone creating a real analog FM repeater would need to do in terms of location, antenna, duplexer, etc.
I documented the steps in setting up the Hotspot at http://www.k6jm.com/hs-setup.htm It's pretty easy. Any analog radio that gives access to the discriminator, which includes radios with a Data port supporting 9600 baud, will likely work. Jim - K6JM ----- Original Message ----- From: David Holman To: dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, July 22, 2010 12:50 PM Subject: Re: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Are you exprerencing anti d-star in your area? Jim, Very valid points.. There is a group in PA, near Allentown (I think) that just put a Kenwood repeater on the air as a DStar repeater. I don't know the details, but I remember talking to the guys that did it. I hope they publish what they did soon. The point is that they did it. It works great (according to them) and it didn't cost $10,000. 73 David, AC7DS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: J. Moen <j...@jwmoen.com> To: dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com Sent: Mon, July 12, 2010 7:47:15 AM Subject: Re: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Are you exprerencing anti d-star in your area? I agree with all your points. Your point about the need for money to help spur change was certainly true of D-Star in the beginning, but we are just on the verge of being able to bring up very inexpensive D-Star repeaters using non-ICOM solutions. A ham near me is setting up a Node Adapter repeater using KB9KHM's DVAR Hot Spot software in full duplex mode. He got some inexpensive radios out of commercial service, built an inexpensive computer, bought an inexpensive duplexer and a decent antenna, and he's on his way. Another ham spent less than US $200 since he had or was given a lot of equipment, but he calculated by being clever he could have done the whole project from scratch for US $500. Right now, these "repeaters" are DPlus only -- they don't support G2 callsign routing, but in the US, they provide over 90% of the functions hams want for very little effort and money. We all are awaiting the release of Dave Lake G4ULF's software that runs on Linux and has been accepted by the US Trust team to be connected in as a full blown G2 compatible repeater. The Open Trust efforts already have solutions that are entirely PC based. What we are expecting now is a new wave of inexpensive repeaters to be put up that will then encourage more people to buy D-Star radios. This second wave of expansion will be less dependent on money and more on publicity and word of mouth. Jim - K6JM
