[Dstar] DV Node Adapter progress

[Michael Carey]

Hi Everybody,
Last week I finally received my CML CMX589AP4 GMSK modem chips and 
quickly fitted them to my Satoshi DV Node Adapter boards which have been 
built ready to go for several months.
With my initial experiments, I had limited success in using some Icom 
IC-F121S commercial radios, Satoshi had released new firmware for the DV 
Node Adapter that auto detected the receive audio polarity and also 
allowed the user to select the appropriate TX polarity as well. This 
eliminated the need to mod the DV Node Adapter PCB or build an external 
circuit to invert the audio for radios that required it. The Icom radios 
did work well on receive but transmit was a little more difficult to get 
right, it didn't seem to matter where I injected the transmit audio, 
things just didn't work very well.
I've not given up on using the IC-F121S radios but I found that another 
radio I had lying around worked even better. I ended up pressing an old 
Simoco SRM9010 radio into service and immediately found that it worked 
100%, all the time!
One of my first contacts using the DV Node Adapter plus the D-Star Hot 
Spot software was Demetria, K4DPW. I was thrilled to make my first 
D-Star/Dplus contact using a non-Icom solution at the business end (of 
course, I was talking into an Icom IC-91AD, but the gateway to Dplus had 
no Icom gear anywhere near it!)
I've had it running on and off through the weekend and it's been 
connected to REF001 C most of today with no issues at all.
I love home-brew D-Star gear!
Regards,
Michael.
VK5ZEA