My experience with buying D-Star rigs is with the IC91AD HT and ID-800 mobile.
I first bought the IC91 dual band HT for it was the least expensive way to go, $400. I like the HT and used it for over 8 months and learned a lot about D-Star. I could get into repeater on D-Star with 5 W solid that on analog with same antenna required more than 25 W for decent copy. I was impressed. My antenna is dual band short Diamond vertical at 15 ft above ground on about average ASL for here. In Feb 09 I purchased a ID-800 mobile dual band. I like it even more due to its higher power and also the ease of a a mobile with mike op. I found at Ham Radio Outlet (HRO) for total $535, no tax and no shipping cost. Most others were $580 range. I like the ID-800. Both the IC91 and ID-800 are great rigs. Both are 2m/440, do D-Star and analog with the typical needed features like CTCSS (PL) encode and decode and ICOM did terrific job in designs. One can go the IC2200 with UT118 D-Star module, but learned from this board this rig does not display user callsigns. In D-Star every time you tx you call is transmitted and it gets displayed on the rcvr's rig. So I would not consider the IC2200, but it is good rig. It is 2 m only, no UHF and found most D-Star on UHF. The IC2820 is catalic of the rigs. It is dual band and main difference over ID-800 is the 800 displays and operates on one band (2m or 440) at a time. The IC91 displays and op on 2 bands. So does the 2820. However, the 2820 can get to $800-900 w/D-Star, a noticable difference from the ID-800 at $535. You can buy 2820 without DS for about same $550. You will be impressed with the added coverage of D-Star. It does offer better performance with coverage at least point-to-point. I have not tried mobile and this I want to do. 30 miles is nothing assuming you have clear path. One thing about DS is the audio quality. It aint as good as analog from a freq response point. Better coverage, but audio sounds robotic. Some long time users I know I hear on analog and know them by their voice. Same user on D-Star I cannot tell who they are even after they give their call. That is the one difference from DS and analog, but I have poor hearing. 73, ron, n9ee/r --- In [email protected], "richiepet...@..." <richiepet...@...> wrote: > > Hi all, I'm thinking about buying a dstar radio but would like to know the > radio to buy hopefully the experienced dstar users will point me in the right > direction. > > I live about 30 miles from the nearest dstar repeater but am mobile a lot to > and from work which will be great.Are you guys finding the coverage better or > worse than an anologue system as i have heard a 20% greater coverage range > but was wondering if this is true. > > Also if you work simplex is the tx coded and can you still enjoy a digital > rag chew net. >
