On Jan 31, 2009, at 6:47 AM, genedathe wrote: > Thanks for the comments, Nate. > > I'm just stirring the pot here for fun. >
Totally understandable. I've NEVER done that. ;-) > I see 1.2DV as nothing new, as I have many radios that reach repeaters > now... > Also understand. The issue here might be... if you're going to have an ID-1 and do DD (your comments below), it's nice not to HAVE to have a VHF/UHF rig with you if your D-STAR repeater "stack" has at least two bands (1.2 DV and "something else"), and you can talk to the kids over on VHF from your 1.2 rig, by just callsign routing to your other module or their callsign, and not have to have two rigs with you at all times. Having both 1.2 DD and 1.2 DV at the repeater site would make that difference. Also if your area does happen to have a 1.2 GHz analog FM repeater or two still around, you'll have a way to access those also. We still have ours here, but it's dead... the club is considering replacing it with D-STAR... > I see 1.2DD as the real performance upgrade: My laptop goes plug and > play into my ham radio (ID-1), and now my laptop can reach a repeater, > and talk to other laptops. My "wow" is not the speed, but the > capability. Off the shelf file transfer, how cool is that? > Be careful here... as someone pointed out, the DD module isn't really a "repeater" per se. It's a data access point. It gets you from your laptop to the network up at the mountain and gets NAT'ed out to the Internet. You can certainly "reach another laptop" by pushing a file to a server on the net, and him pulling it back from there, but it's not a digipeater between you and him. Certainly not a problem for communications, but it's not what some people expect when they read about the high-speed data system. Other people (I think) have figured out how to either use the Icom Gateway computer as a file/chat/ whatever server on the internal network range, and/or have installed other PC's at the site in the private network range, but I don't see any need to have a server that's only available to those on D-STAR. Might as well make it public, and you can now get to it from D-STAR, your house, your cell modem, whatever. Just my opinion... (And since I don't have an ID-1, our local users probably know more about what it can and can't do right now than I do. I'm happy to be corrected on any of the above.) Nate WY0X
