[Dstar] D-Star Simplex

[Tony Langdon]

At 05:43 PM 9/3/2009, you wrote:

>My interesting in ham radio is more the 'emergency' or ad-hoc comms that
>don't rely on infrastructure. I think that D-Star still has a role to
>play here, along with other digital modes over HF & VHF.

My next comments come from several years experience in dealing with 
emergency communications using IRLP and Echolink, supporting 
operations on the other side of the world, no less.  D-STAR's gateway 
network more or less falls into a similar category.

Emergency comms and infrastructure are not necessarily mutually 
exclusive.  It depends on what and where the emergency is.  Not all 
emergencies take our infrastructure (e.g. a chemical spill), and some 
emergencies are not local (I routinely deal with some on the other 
side of the world).  Those of us involved in emergency communications 
need to embrace these new modes and systems, get to learn them, and 
then add them to our existing tools, so we're able to come up with 
the best communication solution for a given situation.  Some 
situations will suit D-STAR, gateways and all, others will be better 
served by HF SSB, VHF simplex or perhaps even a traditional data mode 
such as Pactor or packet.

The more tools we keep in our toolbox, the more solutions we can 
build.  We have to know which tools to use and when.  Avoiding 
infrastructure for no good reason is as bad as being totally 
dependent on it, in my book.

>I'm quite prepared to leave my IC92 on the 2m DV calling freq most
>nights, so if you want to have a chat or try d-rats then please put a
>call out. There's more to ham radio than just repeaters, so give simplex
>a go sometime too!

Simplex was quite popular around Melbourne before VK3RWN came 
about.  I found it very effective, and showed off D-STAR's RF 
performance, especially between fixed stations.  Stations I had 
difficulty working on FM simplex were Q5 both ways with 5W.

73 de VK3JED / VK3IRL
http://vkradio.com