Listen to DSTAR via the internet

Nice article, although pretty shallow, in recent QST. I still think a cell phone architecture would be our best next generation VHF/UHF solution. Imagine just pulling out the cell phone RF front ends and putting in front end for say 900MHz or 1296MHz. Still significant adaptation required but really powerful system. Private two way calls, party line calls, full duplex, voice and data, system of repeaters with capability to hand off. Compare cell phone ability to D-Star.

I'm not sure why D-Star went with bandwidth for voice that appears by all comments to be sub-par. Voice quality vs digital bandwidth has been studied for years. Probably just the first generation out.

 

+1 on that. I will not use a system that forces you to buy their brand of radio.
IRLP and Echolink links up repeaters and nodes just fine. Just not digital that DStar boasts.
Bad thing about digital is, you either get signal or you do not. I have been in plenty of situations where the signal was really weak and scratchy using a HT but still been able to make contact.

 

I couldn't agree more. There truly is something magical about making a point-to-point DX contact using 100 watts and a wire, with no intervening infrastructure of satellites, transatlantic cables, etc. Ham radio can be so much more than a glorified chat room, if only we let it.

 

I am interested in new technology. Just not overpriced, proprietary technology.

My question was not, "Will you sell it to me?", my question was, "Are ya' gonna sell it cheap?".

 

I was talking to an Ohio ham the other day and was asked if I used D-Star. No I don't no D-Star equipment then he told me I could talk on D-Star w/o purchasing a radio. Just had to have a certain program installed on my computer.

Can't remember the program. Anyone knows what it is and where to locate it?

 

I can see where you are coming from, but I think it's a new mode, that has been poorly implemented. I see proprietary codecs as being not in the spirit of amateur radio. Which is open and shared experimentation.

Proprietary codecs are not, IMHO, in line with the spirit of ham radio.

 

I don't know so much about Dstar being 'poorly implemented'. Icom is selling these platforms like hotcakes out here. Proprietary codecs? Definitely!

I don't care what anybody sees as what is ham radio and what isn't. The bottom line for me is that it's too expensive, too proprietary, and too vulnerable in a weather emergency, (IMHO) so it's not for me. Anyone who likes it doesn't need my permission, or anyone else's to enjoy it.

 

I only think it's poorly implemented due to the use of a proprietary codec, that's all.

 

Well there is more to it. For an open standard there is a lack of complete translation of the Japanese spec.

Robin, AA4RC, David, G4ULF, Scott, KI4LKF and others have managed to figure it out. However it's a closed circle, no one is really working together.

There was an attempt to form a D-Star International Coordination Council, ot get everyone working together but that sort of failed.

Icom's G2 software is really pretty poor. Robin at once point was going to work on a complete open replacement, but that hasn't happened.

The digital DTMF transport has been noted as improperly implemented in all the Icom radio's.

The codec is really the least of the issues in my eyes.

 

If this is correct, then there is certainly nothing essential about radio when it comes to ham radio. This seems like an incredibly cynical point of view. To suggest that the point of ham radio is just communication is a bit like saying that the point of the Boston Marathon is transportation. Yet the Boston Marathon is not about simply traveling between the start line and the finish line. It's about *running* between these points, passing the test of fortitude and endurance, etc. Likewise amateur radio is not about merely one person's communicating data to another. It's about one person's communicating that data VIA RADIO while observing good operating procedure and, whenever possible, by displaying some ingenuity, fortitude and skill.

 

Lack of translation is nothing. A good translation can get done quickly with a single person. Just look at the work being done in the Manga arena. Entire books translated with reliable translations in about a week.

But, even if it was faithfully translated into english, you still have the problem of a single sourced codec being used. Because of this, it's in the same book as WinLink, where you need to obtain the required hardware from a single supplier.

Until someone drops the source code for the codec, or at least publishes an open spec of the codec, the entire D-star thing is worthless. In my opinion, only.

Most likely not too big of a deal to most people, but I choose to only purchase open sourced software. And, I'm not going to berate people who choose to do otherwise.

 

This is simply more evidence (as if we needed any) that what Machiavelli said back in 1532, is still very much true today. That is, "There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things."

Indeed, as one poster in a previous thread so aptly put it, thanks largely to the work of our ever-shrinking (but still highly vocal) cadre of resident Luddites, our once technologically forward-looking radio service is now being increasingly viewed by our regulators and others as the "Radio Amish".... firmly stuck in the distant sociological and technological past and perfectly content to remain that way.

Now, certainly, there are a number of other hobbies where remaining firmly "stuck in the past" is an absolutely harmless activity. But, in a world where the broad (and largely underused) slices of radio spectrum we currently occupy are becoming an increasingly valuable commercial commodity, I fear our "Amish" ways WILL eventually prove to be our undoing.

The truth is, Dick, that the line between "radio" and the "Internet" is becoming ever more blurred. And D-Star (and other digital communications modes like it that use the Internet) are simply adaptations of a whole bunch of modern communication technologies...technologies that (sadly) were largely invented by others...outside of our hobby.

I contend we in amateur radio should have been leading the development of all this new communications technology! Instead, the "forward thinkers" in our hobby must overcome heaps of ridicule and oceans of continuing regulatory obstructionism from people like you and your like-thinking buddies in order to introduce these new technologies (invented by others) into the mainstream of our Service.

What's more, unless we as a radio service quickly change our quaint, "Amish Radio" ways and quickly adopt a far more forward-looking collaborative viewpoint to not only embrace but to seek out and perfect these modern communication technologies, I fear that what's now in the very early stages of technological development outside of our Service will most likely prove to be absolutely devastating for our Service's long term "regulatory health" going forward.

As the saying goes, "Those who ignore the lessons of history are bound to repeat them." Indeed, history is chock full of "old" products and technologies that have long since fallen out of the mainstream. Mechanical watches, tube-type radios and black-and-white televisions (not to mention buggy whips and "ice boxes" for refrigeration) come immediately to mind. And the Luddites who desperately hung on to those outdated technologies and ways of doing things long after they had outlived their usefulness are now mostly dead.

Likewise, those persons (and the radio services they populate) who steadfastly refuse to think "outside the box" and, instead, choose to remain firmly planted in the distant sociological and technological past (while continuing to spout old, worn-out dogma from a bygone age as a continued defense of our "fee free" use of increasingly valuable radio spectrum) are most assuredly destined to be "run over" by the people and organizations in the world outside of our Service that are now very hard at work enabling the invention of (as yet undiscovered) communication technologies.

Keith
KB1SF / VA3KSF

 

I'm still trying to wrap my brain around how D-Star is not ham radio... It's a digital voice mode, and last I checked, really doesn't have anything to do with the internet...

 

He did say the word "transmitted".

 

Nice communication tool perhaps, but has nothing to do with radio.
Skype looks smarter and cheaper.

" If you can't enjoy fading and static noise, what you are using is not a radio ".