At 10:46 AM 7/9/2009, you wrote: >Yes, I think it would be pretty dumb to expect your car to be of any >use during a major earthquake in your area. If your goal is to have >some form of transportation in that emergency, get a bicycle. I >think it would be equally dumb to build an emergency communciation >system that depended on the internet. If your goal is to have >emergency communications in that emergency, get an FM (or better >yet, HF) radio and a generator - I'm pretty sure that's what they >used during Katrina...
D-STAR still works without gateways, and it often outperforms FM by a wide margin in point to point applications. I'd still have a D-STAR capable radio in my toolbox, alongside the HF rig and any extra VHF/UHF FM radios I carry. D-STAR is also good for non voice traffic, which FM and SSB aren't (of course, there's packet, PSK-31, etc). And if D-STAR isn't going to be used, the radio still works on FM, so I would have a spare/backup FM rig, in the worst case. :) >There are a lot of claims and promises for DStar as an Emcomm >solution but no real world success stories. Time will tell, but I'd >take an a mutli-mode HF/VHF rig like the FT-857D if I could have >only one rig for an emergency... I would never take only one radio, because I want my HF and VHF/UHF to be in separate radios (running both HF and VHF nets side by side is common here). The VHF/UHF radio needs to have FM capability, and FM/D-STAR is probably more useful than FM/SSB. Might even find more people in this parts with D-STAR than SSB setup ready to roll on VHF. 73 de VK3JED / VK3IRL http://vkradio.com
