Mathew, welcome. First and foremost, welcome to the group. Where are you located, and give some insight as to what you have for a site.
To give you a small insight on what we have in Florida, you can look at www.florida-dstar.info. Next, KJ4ACN (the system I admin and take care of along with the Club Prez and the tower owner) is on a 400 foot tower with 620' AMSL. We cover about the same as would our counter part at 805' at 21 watts and no line loss. I can go on and on but getting to the point here, HRO, AES, WHO EVER YOU CHOOSE that sales ICOM radio and gear, you can purchase from would be your call. Next, how many people are in your repeaters footprint? How many are wanting to try this out? Your nearly complete as far as build out goes, you only take out the analog and put the DSTAR in it's place. Cost? well looking at it blindly $1350 for the controller, and $1200 -/+ for the VHF module. ( I have a UHF available for $2500 with Controller ) There are many ways to go from here after. Next stop, once you here from your local guys.... take a test drive on one of their systems. After that, then we can answer the rest of your question. 73 Evans F. Mitchell KD4EFM / AFA4TH FL / WQFK-894 Fla. D-Star Tech Support Group <http://www.florida-dstar.info> Polk ARES A.E.C. http://www.polkemcomm.org Train Safety: There is a train coming in either direction at any time, ALWAYS stop, look, & listen. NEVER STOP ON A TRACK, and NEVER CROSS A GATE THAT IS DOWN. NO MATTER WHAT!!!! TRAIN ENGINEERS ARE HUMANS TOO.
