K4QST wrote: In my admittedly limited circle of ham friends, I don't know of a soul who isn't using a store-bought 2m/70cm transceiver; I suppose that makes all of us appliance operators. This "limitation" doesn't concern me.
Ahhh ... an honest man. We hear this "complaint" all of the time. It is extremely rare that someone would build, form "scratch," a monoband VHF-FM transceiver, let alone a dual band version. But even for those who persist in this "myth" of you can't build it yourself, please see http://www.moetronix.com/dstar/ (I saw this thing in operation at Dayton 2007.) What _does_ concern me: a) cost for users($900 for a dual-band, dual-receive D-Star 2820? c'mon!) It's rich for some folks budget, no doubt, but you have to consider a few things. * This unit also includes a GPS, a remotable head, digital interfaces, etc. * It is not a vanilla dual band analog FM transceiver. If you don't like the price, don't buy it, or prevail upon JVC (Kenwood), Motorola (Yaesu), Alinco, Ten-Tec, or others to builder and to offer a competing model, or be real adventurous and design, build, certify, and sell one yourself. * Put it in the context of time and its really cheap. I purchased new, about 28 years ago, for around $300 a single band, single channel (no PL), 2 meter handheld that put out about a watt or two (Icom IC-2AT) -- in today's dollars thats $1006.67 ( see http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl ) I'd love to drive a new Mercedes for around $5000, but it isn't going to happen, things cost what they cost, we just have to decide their value and if we can spare the money. (Fortunately, my family bought me a 2820 as a birthday present this year.) b) cost for repeater equipment (The small clubs in this area would find the hardware to be impossibly expensive) What some clubs have discovered is "fund raising," approaching community, governmental, and other organizations for donations to enhance the local emergency preparedness or set up a special fund and solicit funds. If you were going for new repeater equipment from JVC or Motorola you would find it costs about the same or more (especially if you want digital). Of course you can build a repeater that will pass D-STAR from 30 year old commercial gear, but currently you give up the bells and whistles (like the gateway) -- just get a good discriminator tap and run it directly to the modulator (you may have to do some conditioning of the signal). c) coverage (I live in a rural area, as do all of my ham friends) That isn't coverage, D-STAR coverage is similar to any other FM signal, though it has better intelligibility as the signal goes down to a threshold. You are referring to penetration, D-STAR has not penetrated as far into rural areas as you would like -- you and your friends can solve that. d) Only one brand of radio to choose from (the marketing/technical reasons don't matter to me- bottom line is only one brand of radio to choose from) Contact the other vendors and tell them to get over their egos and provide a D-STAR product or loose sales to Icom (which they are). I assume you don't buy postage and mail things, because you can only do that through a single vendor? On it's face, D-Star is a great thing. I do know all of the advantages and think they are fantastic. Unfortunately, unless you live in a reasonably urban area with a good density of affluent users, good D-Star coverage will be a long time coming. Earlier this week I was gung-ho for getting a D-star radio. It just took me a few days to analyze the disadvantages and to realize that an analog APRS radio would be a much better choice for me. Are you only going to beacon your position? On D-STAR you can talk and send your position at the same time on analog you get to switch back and forth between the two. APRS alone may be the best for you, since you don't have a D-PRS enabled repeater/gateway in the area, but the future looking approach would be to buy the D-STAR radio and run APRS (analog) on it until the repeater comes - D-STAR radios run Analog but withour major hacking an analog radio isn't easily adapted to D-STAR (or go the expensive route and get a D-STAR upgradeable radio, though its cheaper to buy it with D-STAR to begin with...) John D. Hays Amateur Radio Station K7VE <http://k7ve.ampr.org> PO Box 1223 Edmonds, WA 98020-1223 VOIP/SIP: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Phone: 206-801-0820 801-790-0950 Fax: 866-309-6077 In the UK: 08449867545 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
