Our experience here in Northern Ohio, where we have a new
repeater sponsored by a newly formed group (N.O.D.I.G.), was
that Icom is no longer giving modules away. We tried to get
one and were denied. So, we went with a Satoshi board. We
had even offered to guarantee the purchase of a certain
number of D-STAR radios but that did not change their minds.
W8KRF
On 7/24/2010 12:59 PM, Chris Fowler wrote:
I believe you may see this happening where the market
makes sense. In
large metropolitan areas with a lot of hams. If I was ICOM
I would
donate repeaters to clubs that had real deployment plans
in hopes of
selling more radios. As others start producing D-Star
hardware this
type of investment will make less sense. It is easy for me
to give you
a repeater when I also am the only one selling D-Star
solutions.
What you should try is to call up ICOM if your club is
working on a plan
and ask for a substantial discount. You can also make a
case of how
many members are in your club and how many may purchase
radios. If the
numbers make sense you'll may get a discount or even a
donation.
I've always said that to sell D-Star all you need to do is
"sell" ARES.
Once you do that you'll get greater adoption from ARES
members who want
the same thing as their group wants. You can then work on
the hams
that are not ARES members or work on individual clubs.
At least with the repeater ICOM has got the ball moving
(very fast). I
just wished the 10Ghz hardware was 10% of what it retails
for. That
would help silence those that say "but the Internet is not
reliable".
Bert: I've never been a hater :) There were just certain
things I did
not like, and still don't, about D-Star. You take the good
with the bad
and just enjoy it. I used to complain about the expense
but I've gotten
over that mess. I don't really think D-Star is that much
more expensive
than anything else in this or other hobbies. We have
people that want
to buy Mototrbo digital radios and experiment with those.
A used HT is
about the same price as a new 91AD. Look in any old QST
(with the back
catalog) and run those numbers through the online
inflation calculator
and you'll realize we don't really pay a lot for our gear.
We get a lot
of value for our dollars.
Chris k4fh
