What I can say is that I spent the entire weekend at Dayton talking to people about D-STAR. There were a lot of people who had interest in it. I'm pretty sure that after stopping by and hearing about it, a number of folks went home with a D-STAR radio. There were a large number of folks who dropped by the booth.
I only had 1 or 2 of the classic "negative" hams. This is great, because the number has dropped over the years. At this point, we've now got answers to most of the negative questions. There are number of manufacturers making equipment for D-STAR. We can make a non D-STAR radio a D-STAR radio, and we now have approved non-Icom repeaters that can be connected to the network. There will always be those who don't want to hear about D-STAR. That's okay. There's no rule in ham radio that everyone has to do everything. We have HFers that have never been above 50 MHz and folks who have never been below it. We've got folks who work people that live on the earth, and we've got people who talk to satellites, even the moon. But there are still a lot of people who don't know what D-STAR is and we need to work at making sure that we at least get the word out. Ed WA4YIH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Barry Sent: Sunday, May 16, 2010 4:33 AM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Re: DSTAR newcomer FINISH All I sometimes get when I do talks about it, is "What's the point?! Why bother?" After a few extra questions and further exploration into their supposed disbelief, it usually comes out at the end; "after all, its too expensive..." I think jealousy is a prevailing trait with many, that is, until one day they pop up on the mode... Neil G7EBY.
