We've got a local D-STAR 70 cm repeater on the air and I am looking at approaches to allow access via analog FM users. (This is probably a religious issue, so please chill :-) I would keep the FM transmissions local and not repeat them out on the network. The intent here is to provide a bridging strategy for those times when an FM rig happens to be available but a DV rig is not.
My intent is to have the D-STAR 70 cm repeater crossbanded to a 2 Meter simplex frequency. Before I re-invent the wheel, I want to find out what other folks have tried. 1. It seems that the ICOM D-STAR controller is not very flexible and it would be quite the hack to interface an FM rig into it. Let me know if you've found a reasonable way to do this. 2. My preferred approach at this time is to configure two transceivers back-to-back with a controller in between. One of the transceivers needs to be a DV rig. I found DJ0ABR's web page with some nice work there: http://www.dj0abr.de/index_english.html 3. The ID-880 has a packet port with a squelch line on it. Has anyone checked the behavior of this line in DV mode? Does it toggle in response to a decoded DV signal or what? This would be a convenient way to connect in but I fear that it might just be a carrier operated signal (which might still be workable). 4. Any other ideas? Thanks in advance, Bob K0NR
