David, simple answer to your statement is this, don't install Dplus. Without Dplus, your now a prime ICOM G2 Gateway without the extra goodies. No Linking, no reflector access, nada. You only get callsign routing, and Multicasting. You have taken away the "internet" portion of it's capabilities. You still have (for full stack or port AD) internet for the 23cm side, which would be email, file transfers, and so on..... not to mention the ability to do VoIP. ( yes, I have ran Echolink over 23cm Dstar Data, and it works) The main thing is this, we do not have the money to invest in 10Ghz PTP gear, nor is it widely used in the US at all.... There for, the Gateway portion uses the internet to conduct it's callsign routing function. Anything less then that, you are working with a stand alone repeater site with no outside world communication. I agree, as does all the other admins, the software is less then desirable, BUT, it works. We just have to use a different kind of an interface to make things more interesting to the ham community. 73 from the KJ4ACN region of West Central Florida.
Evans F. Mitchell KD4EFM / WQFK-894 Fla. D-Star Tech Support Group http://www.florida-dstar.info <http://www.florida-dstar.info/> Polk ARES A.E.C. http://www.polkemcomm.org <http://www.polkemcomm.org/> BB8330 PIN: 30965B58 _____ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of David Holman Sent: Tuesday, January 19, 2010 3:17 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Re: New guy I play with DStar and have played with it in a number of environments. I think that DStar is awesome, but we (the hams) really need to pry ICOM's icy grip off of it. The system is awesome, but the fact that no other manufacturers will play in this game is bad. I am not much of a dongle supporter because we are "radio" amateurs, not "internet" amateurs. The internet is a great thing, but we should not become dependent on it, and that is what the dongle does. We need to figure out how to set up an RF network that will support routing of the DStar transmissions and move away from the internet. Again, that would require us to pry ICOM's icy grip off DStar. I am not sure how to do that. I will leave that up to people much smarter than me. 73 David, AC7DS
