[Dstar] Australian D-Star Network News

Sat May 30 09:46:26 CST 2009

G'day,

Here is this month's news and information on VK D-Star.

North East Victoria D-Star;

D-Star operators in North East Victoria and Southern NSW now have access to
D-Star via the VK3RWW Portable repeater. VK3RWW has been placed on Mt Wombat
for a trial period to enable amateurs in the area to experience the fun of
D-Star. A number of operators in the area already have D-Star radios and
want to put them to good use. A D-Star presentation and training session
will be held at the Shepparton and District ARC club rooms on June the 6th
for all who are interested. If the trial is successful the will investigate
purchasing a UHF D-Star repeater for Mt Wombat. VK3RWW will be operational
on Mt Wombat for approximately 6 weeks. The Shepparton ARC web site can be
found at http://www.sadarc.org/ 

There are a number of Clubs around Australia that are currently considering
or have commenced D-Star repeater projects. If you are involved in one of
these clubs please let us know what is happening.

Gateway back on line;

The VK5RWN Gateway is back on line after repairs to the server were
completed by Ben VK5BB earlier this month. Ben and AREG have done a great
job in maintaining the VK5RWN repeater.

Dplus Dashboards;

Dplus Dashboards are now available: After several months of work the Dplus
Dashboards are now available on a single web page at
www.dstar.org.au/dashboard.htm. The dashboard page provide information on
the connection status of the local D-Star repeater system. The Dplus
Dashboard is similar to www.dstarusers.org <http://www.dstarusers.org/> ,
http://nj6n.com/dplusmon/ and
<http://www.jfindu.net/dstarlh.aspx?rptr=VK3RWN> http://www.jfindu.net.

VK3RMM Gatway;

There are plans underway to add a Gateway to the VK3RMM D-Star repeater on
Mt Macedon. Amateur Radio Victoria has asked for donations of equipment to
assist.

Wimmera D-Star;

VK3RDK has moved to its final home in Horsham. Testing has shown that the
coverage of the repeater is better than expected. There is still some fine
tuning to be done on the system as the Wimmera club D-Star admin team
increase there knowledge of D-Star.

International D-Star News;

A new International D-Star News letter is being published on a regular
basis. It is available for download in PDF format at
www.DSTARINFO.com/newsletter<http://www.DSTARINFO.com/newsletter>

New D-Star Equipment;

Icom have released 2 new D-Star radios, the ID-8080 mobile and the ID-80
hand held. These where officially released at Dayton this year. Connie
KB0ZSG was on the Icom stand at Dayton to present and talk about the radios
to the Dayton attendees. We were very fortunate to have Connie join the VK
D-Star net last Thursday evening where she gave us a run down on the new
radios. The new radios will be available in Australia latter this year.

A group of Duch amateurs are well on the way to finalizing 3 D-Star home
brew kits. The first kit will plug in to your standard VHF/UHF radio's 9600
baud data port and allow you to decode the D-Star data stream into
manageable size frames according to the D-Star DV radio protocol. The second
kit is a standalone D-Star data terminal which allows repeater monitoring;
short messaging and can act as a D-Star data gateway. The third kit, the
D-Star Digital Station is a complete modular designed radio transceiver. The
D-Star Digital Station will allow D-Star data and FM voice operation on
2mtr, 70cm or 23cm depending on the RF module you select. A Digital Voice
module will also be available for all 3 modems; this will allow D-Star
Digital Voice operations. More information on these modems can be found at
http://www.dutch-star.nl/

Australian National D-Star Network Status.

VK2RDS

A UPS was installed to protect the Gateway and other IT equipment from power
interruptions. The ADSL uplink issue is being worked on by the local Admin
team.. They hope to have a resolution in the not to distant future. The
broadband connection to the D-Star International Network is currently down

VK2RWN

You may have noticed that the Gateway is not always available on this system
this is due to an issue with the broadband router. The router is
intermittently locking up which isolates the Gateway from the rest of the
network. The VK2RWN Admin team is working on the problem.

VK5RWN

The Gateway has repaired and reinstalled at the repeater site.

D-Star Repeater Status Summary

VK2RWN - Operational on all bands except 23cm DD & DV. 

-         ADSL uplink issues are causing some jitter (poor audio)

-         No DV-Dongle access

VK2RDS - Operational on all bands except 23cm DD. 

-         ADSL uplink issues are causing some jitter (poor audio)

-         No DV-Dongle access

-         Gateway currently off line

VK3RBA - Operational 

-         Currently No gateway connection

VK3RDK - Operational. 

-         Currently no gateway connection

VK3RWN - Operational

VK3RWW - Operational

-         Current location Mt Wombat

-         Note; Gateway access for will be available from the 2nd of June

VK3RMM -Operational on 70cm 

-         Currently no gateway connection

VK4RWN - Operational

-         70cm DV& 23cm DV off air

-         duplicate IP address an issue for Linking

VK4RDS - Operational

VK4RBX - Not Operational

VK5REX - Operational

-         Experimentation continues with Home Brew equipment and D-Star
HotSpot

VK5RWN - Operational on all bands except 23cm DD & DV

-         Gateway not operational

VK6RWN - Operational on all bands except 23cm DV

-         There are known issues with incoming audio from remote station
becoming intermittently choppy. This is being investigated.

VK8RAD - Check with local repeater operators.

For more details visit www.dstar.org.au <http://www.dstar.org.au/>  or
http://www.wia.org.au/members/repeaters/data/

Weekly Nets

The WIA D-Star repeaters port C connect to the following nets each week:

EMDRC Net

 <http://www.emdrc.com.au/> www.emdrc.com.au

Thursday 8pm ESST (10:00 UTC)

VK3RWN C

REF003 C

Ozark Mountain D-STAR Net

http://www.w0omd.org/

Monday 12noon ESST  (02:00 UTC)

W0OMD C

REF001 C

If you would like your local D-Star repeater to participate in other D-Star
nets please email me.

A list of D-Star nets can be found at http://www.dstar.org.au/reflectors.htm
and http://www.dstarinfo.com/Nets/Nets.htm

Reflector Connections.

For the trial at Mt Wombat the following ports are connected:

VK3RWW Port B will be connected to Reflector 003 C

VK3RWN Port C is connected to Reflector 003 C

These two ports can be disconnected using the UnLink command when required. 

They will automatically re-link after a preset time of no RF activity.

The following connections are normally established on Reflector 003:

VK2RDS Port B is connected to Reflector 003 B

VK2RWN Port B is connected to Reflector 003 B

VK3RWN Port B is connected to Reflector 003 B

VK4RDS Port C is connected to Reflector 003 C

VK5REX Port B is connected to Reflector 003 B or VK5RWN C

VK6RWN Port B is connected to Reflector 003 B

Reflector REF003 port B is the Australian National D-Star connection port.

NOTE: The D-Star linking application occasionally has problems. If you are
taking on a link (such as port B) and getting no response it is possible
that the linking system may need to be reset. Please place an email
notification of the problem on this list for assistance.

User Callsigns

There has been some discussion on the use of multiple callsign suffixes.
Many operators use a different suffix for each radio, M for mobile P for
portable etc.. ( e.g. VK3UR M or VK3UR P ) This can be confusing for remote
stations and friends when they callsign route to you. They may not know
which radio or callsign you are using at the time and will probably use your
base callsign ( VK3UR ) to contact you.

Hint; Use the same callsign on all radios unless you are using 2 radios at
the same time.

DPRS Beacons

Remember to set your Auto transmit beacon rate for DPRS to 10 Minutes for
mobiles and 30 Minutes for home stations. If your station is unattended turn
off all DPRS beacons.

Linking (Dplus)

The Linking and Unlink functions on Ports A & C of all WIA D-Star repeaters
is available to operators.

Linking allows operators on the local D-Star repeater port to link to a
remote D-Star reflector or repeater port without the operator needing to
program anything special in their URCALL field. This enables a virtual
repeater to be set up between the local port and one or more (if using a
reflector) remote D-Star repeater ports around the world.

Operational hints;

-                   The local WIA repeater systems are configured to
automatically unlink the connection in 15 minutes if there is no local RF
activity.

-                   At selected times when nets are scheduled the repeater
system will automatically drop any links, temporarily disable operator
linking on the port and set the system up for the net. After the net is
completed operations will be restored to normal.

-                   The local WIA repeater will transmit a link status text
message to all radios on the RF port every 10 minutes.

-                   An voice announcement indicating the port you are on is
linked will be played every 15 minutes.

For details on how to use D-Star linking please read the Guide at
http://www.dstar.org.au/Australian_D-Star_Repeater_Linking_User_Guide_V1.1.p
df

WIA D-Star repeater Port Bs are not enabled for operator link control.

Non WIA D-Star repeaters may or may not have operator linking available.

You can use Callsign Routing, Node Linking or Multicasting when you wish to
call any remote operators. For help with radio configurations for Routing
visit the D-Star Calculator at
<http://www.dstarinfo.com/Calculator/Default.htm>
www.dstarinfo.com/Calculator/Default.htm

More information on D-Star is at www.dstar.org.au <http://www.dstar.org.au/>

Cheers,

Richard

VK3JFK

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