There's been a lot of discussion in this thread about D-Star itself, but, unless I missed something, there's only been a passing mention of DStarUsers.org. To me, that's one of it's strong points. What other ham radio system allows you find a list of what repeaters are active right now and then join that conversation. That mechanism by itself makes D-Star unique and uniquely useful. IRLP and Echolink can not do that. With DStarUsers.org and a dongle, you're never more than about 60 seconds from a QSO. (On RF, it may take another minute to set up the link.) Bert Bruner KE4FOV
________________________________ From: dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com [mailto:dstar_digi...@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of n2vu911 Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2010 8:06 AM To: dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com Subject: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Please help me support D-Star ... Greetings to the group, My name is Donald ~ N2VU, and I'm in Warren County New York ... the first to have D-Star in the area. I was on the fence about D-Star for quite a while until 2 weeks ago and boy do I wish I got into it sooner. I love it! I realize that there's another thread in this group about negativity towards this new technology but what I'm asking for here is for your comments and experiences with D-Star that I can incorporate into the presentations I'd like to make with regards to the ways D-Star is NOT redundant to Echolink or IRLP or anything else for that matter. While sharing my excitement about D-Star with others in the area, aside from the most common remark being that its way over priced, they're that its another version of what's already out there. Since I haven't used either IRLP or Echolink, I cant speak from experience with comparisons, so if those of you who have can tell me how its not, I'd like to incorporate these facts into my "argument" - as it seems! In fact, I'd