We've had the discussion many times before. Last year at Dayton, everyone was having to source route to the local repeater to talk. No one was able to have a conversation because people kept barging in because they could not hear the activity on the local repeater.
This year there were a number of good QSOs because it was linked to the reflector and everyone could hear the activity before talking. You say that because you look at your display and see the response that you have an ironclad knowledge that your signal went through. But that's not a possibility for mobile stations who should keep their eyes on the road. And my HT has been on my belt all weekend, I'm not lifting it every time I have to talk. I've been able to talk around the world this weekend without EVER looking at my display, nor changing a channel. I've had a number of QSOs, I've people from all over the place. I've heard both sides of the conversations. That's something that just WILL NOT HAPPEN, no way, no how, with callsign routing. There have been three or four way conversations with people from different states and different countries. That CAN NOT HAPPEN with callsign routing. We have the Southeaster Weather Net where 25+ repeaters and 50+ users link up. There's less doubling here than on a FM local repeater net. You CAN NOT DO THIS with callsign routing. If I am having a conversation on a repeater with someone local and someone source routes in, they don't know an existing QSO is on the repeater, even if the wait 15 minutes. The only way that they can find out is if they keep transmitting and watching their display and eventually see the error code come back. For me to tell them that the repeater Is busy, I've got to program my radio as I'm driving 70 mph down the road. And then make a call, and then change the programming on my radio. A process that usually takes a couple of minutes. My comment was meant as a tongue in cheek response and I didn't intend to inflame you so badly. But indeed the response stands, Source routing has a number of issues for which this is indeed a case. And not source routing is indeed a solution. About the only one that you've found as a negative for linking is that the first QSO might be lost. And your premise is that people link and don't listen at all, that's just not the situation. A LOT of people listen and it's up to the seasoned operators to show users how to do it correctly. As far as signals dropping into nowhere, that does indeed SOMETIME occur and is often related to network congestion. It is a known problem and there have been a number of things that Robin has done to help with the situation. BUT, since you don't use it that much, you probably don't have much experience and are speaking from what could be older experience. As one of the managers of one of the largest nets, I have a direct and constant exposure to the issues and while repeaters do sometime drop off, the occurrence has dropped dramatically. We have MANY nets in which we don't have repeaters drop off the air. And then periodically we have one during which there is obvious network congestion and we lose a couple of repeaters during the net, but they reconnect and life goes on. Ed WA4YIH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Nate Duehr Sent: Sunday, May 17, 2009 3:22 AM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: 880 vs 800 (was: Re: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Signal Distance) On Fri, 15 May 2009 23:28:54 -0400, "Woodrick, Ed" <[email protected]<mailto:ewoodrick%40ed-com.com>> said: > > > Easy solution, stop callsign routing. Use repeater linking instead. > Problem solved. > > Ed WA4YIH That'd be silly. If I want to KNOW for sure the call made it to the other side, and get a RESPONSE from the network that says so, the ONLY option for that is callsign routing. The day D-Plus linking is CONFIRMED with a "UR" back on the radio, you'd have an argument. Until then, they're both viable, and only one is guaranteed to show up at the other end. Try listening in on on a Reflector-based D-Plus Net sometime and see how many stations double and can't figure out that's what happened. It's REALLY obvious when you listen/watch for it. Another common mistake on Reflectors: People don't listen for AT LEAST THREE MINUTES before transmitting after linking in. D-Plus is slightly busted in that it can't "pick up in the middle of a stream" when you link your local repeater into a Reflector and there's already a transmission taking place. You hear NOTHING. Since the timeout timers on the repeaters are 3 minutes... the only GUARANTEED way the "frequency is clear" after you link into a Reflector, is to WAIT 3 MINUTES. No one does it. You hear people bust into on-going QSO's on REF001C *ALL THE TIME* because of this. It's not fully-baked yet. Callsign routing is. As I've said before, I use both. But your zealoutry (you've made this argument before, and don't seem to care about the above-mentioned before BUGS in it) about it is misplaced. D-Plus isn't "right" yet. If Robin can't find a way to have it respond with "UR" properly, it'll NEVER be right. It's a hackish add-on that works, but isn't engineered as well as the VERY VENERABLE callsign routing. For one repeater to one repeater "linking" it's mainly attractive to people because it requires less brainpower to operate, and considering that callsign routing doesn't really require much brainpower, it's kinda funny really. How hard is it to keep your regular contact's repeaters in a memory channel as a "/repeater" route? Not hard at all. The other major draw is Reflectors, but as pointed out above, the way it's implemented today, people won't wait long enough (one full transmission's maximum time) to see if the frequency is clear when they link in. I hear it all the time on busy Reflectors. The other thing you hear CONSTANTLY on a busy Reflector is whole transmissions disappearing and people saying, "Not sure where you went, but we didn't hear any of that transmission, Bob." No one has done an adequate investigation into the cause. I'm not anti-DPlus or pro-callsign routes or anything like that. But I'm a support tech who always calls it like it is... D-Plus linking has problems still. I think also from a human-training point of view, it adds confusion. People start to think the ONLY way to call another system is via D-Plus commands, and that's just not accurate. If they want to KNOW their call went through, they really should be using callsign routes and understanding them. Is it nice to have Dongle users and Reflectors, sure. Is D-Plus the answer to all routing/calling for everything? Not yet. Not by a long shot. Nate WY0X -- Nate Duehr [email protected]<mailto:nate%40natetech.com> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
