My two Cents on the D-star Drama. The problem here is not the technology itself. The problem with Dstar is that radios are so expensive. On one hand you have ham clubs that can dishout the money to put up a wonderful dstar repeater but in the other hand you have hams that can afford an analogue radio and they feel like they are being left out not to mention the complexity of operating a dstar radio. As far as radio frequency pairs are concerned, I believe that if a radio club wants to put a dstar repeater in their area, they should take down an analogue pair that they have in use and use for dstar. STOP HOGGING UP THE SPECTRUM, It is only fair. 2M and 73cm are already crowded as it is. I dont think hams are afraid of change, It is about the money that has to be dished out buy a radio to get out on the 2/73/220Mhz bands. We all know how expensive it is to maintain an analogue repeater now think about how much it is going to cost to maintain a digital repeater. I can assure you that membership fees are going to go up and then what? Uncle Sam is not going to give grants without something in return so go figure. Echolink is software that complements a repeater system, echoirlp costs are not that bad compared to a DV dongle or the highspeed dstar gateway. I for one do not oppose change, I just choose to ignore the dstar hype.
KILO_INDIA-SIX_ELE_ENE_EQUIS! 73'S HASTA LA PROXIMA ________________________________ From: Donald James <studio...@earthlink.net> To: dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com Sent: Mon, July 12, 2010 12:17:33 PM Subject: RE: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Are you exprerencing anti d-star in your area? I’d love to hear and learn more about getting governments grant(s) for D-Star. What can you (anyone) who knows about this share. Not speculation but actual knowlege about this – thanks, Donald -----Original Message----- From: dstar_digital@ yahoogroups. com [mailto:dstar_ digi...@yahoogro ups.com] On Behalf Of Nate Duehr Sent: Monday, July 12, 20104:38 AM To: dstar_digital@ yahoogroups. com Subject: Re: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Are you exprerencing anti d-star in your area? On Jul 12, 2010, at 2:02 AM, Nate Duehr wrote: > All it takes to grow D-STAR (or any other new mode in any particular area) is >time and money... D-STAR has flourished in some areas due to massive influxes >of >taxpayer dollars in the form of government grants... some local, some Federal. >in other areas, it's alive but weak... and in still others, it's not doing >anything at all. Clarification: This was meant to be worded in such a way as to say it's very much flourishing in some areas, mediocre in others, and low in still others. And of course, there's also places where it's flourishing where large sums of personal monies have been spent on it, not just the government money areas... that sentence was badly worded. The point here was... it takes a lot of $ to change out infrastructure, no matter what mode or type it is... and in a recession, it's not going to grow at super-fast rates in most areas, but in areas where there's interest/money to do it, it took off, for sure. Once someone buys/builds the infrastructure, users show up at a pretty good clip, usually. Then it tapers off. I see about 4 registration requests a month in the area now. We're one of the "medium interest/money" areas, and it wouldn't have really gotten off the ground without donated repeaters to kick-start it. That led to some locals donating a few thousand dollars worth of duplexer, feedline, antennas, and tower space. Now there's a couple more on the air. One off of grant money, two privately funded... It still doesn't have a ton of "traction", but we do have over 100 registered users... so we're square in the middle of the bell-curve. Basically growth of repeater networks comes down to either having a "sugar-daddy" who'll buy a lot of stuff... or government money... or a large enough club/organization to "spread the load" of the up-front infrastructure costs... once that part's handled, it's just about time and effort to get it on the air. -- Nate Duehr, WY0X n...@natetech. com
