[Dstar] D-Star repeater experiment - update

[Michael Carey]

Hi Everybody,
I'm back from the repeater site and things went very well.
I was able to use the DV Node Adapter repeater to make contact with 
VK5RF in Port Lincoln, some 40Km away. Not bad considering I was using 
the existing 146.750/146.150 2m repeater antenna for receive (using a 
"T" adapter on the receive port of the duplexer) and a folded dipole 
lower down on the tower for transmit. VK5RF was using an IC-91AD.
There was virtually no interaction between the two repeaters on site. 
There were several Adelaide station QSO's on the VK5RAC 2m repeater 
during the time I was testing and while I was transmitting 25w on the 
GMSK repeater, there were no de-sense issues on the FM repeater
Unfortunately there were no other D-Star stations on air, but I was also 
able to set up a local DV Node Adapter D-Star Hot Spot using a NextG 
phone for internet connection. I was able to use that to provide a Dplus 
link from the test repeater to the rest of the world. This would have 
been better with more separation between the Hot Spot and the repeater, 
but it was a good proof of concept for a linked D-Star system using non 
Icom hardware.
All in all, it was a fun time experimenting with radio gear...
Michael.
VK5ZEA

Michael Carey wrote:
> Hi Everybody,
> This coming Sunday, 29 March, I'm planning on doing some experiments 
> with my homebrew standalone D-Star GMSK repeater.
> I'll be setting it up at the VK5RAC repeater site North of Port 
> Lincoln. One of our local D-Star users will be out of town so I am 
> asking if there is anyone on this list in Adelaide who might be able 
> to try and make a contact.
> I will be using the 146.725MHz & 146.125MHz repeater pair, which 
> aren't used in VK5 at the moment. I will be monitoring on FM as well, 
> just in case prorogation is good and I cause interference to an 
> interstate FM repeater using these freqencies.
> You will need to program "VK5RAC C" into the Rpt1 callsign field (Rpt2 
> can be left blank) to open up the GMSK Node Adapter. I will be trying 
> several power levels... 5w, 10w and 25w to check interaction with the 
> existing VK5RAC 2m FM repeater.
> I will be onsite during this test and can be contacted on my mobile 
> phone 0408 427479.
> Regards,
> Michael.
> VK5ZEA
>
>
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