Anyone else got D-Star yet?

Has anyone tried D-Star yet? I have just bought a D-Star Icom IC-E92 Handheld and had some contacts on it but it's not connected to the internet yet.

I am yet to find out how you can work thru other repeaters and don't think you dial nodes up but type the call sign of the repeater you want in the memory. Not 100% sure yet though...

Dave

MW3VSG wrote:I am yet to find out how you can work thru other repeaters and don't think you dial nodes up but type the call sign of the repeater you want in the memory. Not 100% sure yet though...

From reading up in a RadCom I was lent, apparently you have to add the port letter you want to come out at on the distant repeater. Now I'm not sure how you get to know this, for example if you have a G friend visiting the States and know his local D-Star repeater will be N7XYZ, how do you get to know which of three ports i.e. 2m/70cms/23cms, he'll be on and which letter A, B or C relates to which band?

I think JARL have missed a trick here (although I guess it could be implemented in a firmware revision as it is all open source), but wouldn't it be nice to just be able to put into your handheld/mobile a normal callsign, e.g. G4ABC, the local repeater via its internet link has a list of where everyone was last heard, and then it automatically routes you to where they were/are.

Here's a question I've not seen answered anywhere.... with D-Star can you have more than one user using the input/output of a repeater at once? e.g. like a normal mobile phone cell... I guess again this could be implemented in future f/ware by giving the input and output of a rptr several 'windows'.

G4TUP wrote:I think JARL have missed a trick here (although I guess it could be implemented in a firmware revision as it is all open source), but wouldn't it be nice to just be able to put into your handheld/mobile a normal callsign, e.g. G4ABC, the local repeater via its internet link has a list of where everyone was last heard, and then it automatically routes you to where they were/are.

After a bit of digging been able to answer my own question here! Hope this isn't teaching operators how to suck eggs but think it may be useful to newcomers.

You can do the above in a sort of semi-automatic fashion - apparently each repeater has a gateway port (port G) that when connected to takes you to a global THRUST database server which shows on which repeater and port a callsign was last seen.

Wouldn't it be nice in the future though if this was all done automatically for you if you put an operator's callsign in your rig....

Hope this helps.

Well that is something I new to me thanks Dave. I didn't know it req a port for it to operate. I was lead to believe all you need is the repeater name for the memory to be able to open it.

I have not tried the internet side out yet as the connection is not on GB7WP at moment. Will try it out once the connection is up and running...

Apparently you can get to a wanted callsign wherever it was last seen automatically, by putting it
in URCALL. Actually found a PDF that is a MUST read and shows and explains all sorts of configs.... See page 13 for the above... enjoy!

http://www.hamcom.org/presentations/HC2008%20-%20Configuring%20your%20D-Star%20Radio.pdf

.d.

Nice one Dave, thanks for that...

I have just set the D-Star 2820 radio with a couple of the local repeaters.

Dave

D Star has taken off pretty big in South Wales, from the date of this post and most others on D-Star it seems that things in the North are pretty stagnant, would like to know if there is much interest in the region?

DAVE