A D-Star experience while on holiday.
This summer I have spend my holidays in the French Alps at Lake Annecy. We had parked the family on the south border of the lake and where surrounded by mountains.
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On the way to the final destination, we could already use the D-Star repeater HB9IAC on 145.7625 MHz.
With my ICOM IC-E880D transceiver securely mounted in the car, a qso could be made with PI1DSA, the D-Star repeater in Amersfoort (Netherlands)
But…
This D-Star repeater had no possibility to connect using the D Plus network functions. So linking to PI1DSA by using PI1DSABL in the UR field did not work. We needed to use the original and standard D-Star routing functions. Thus in stead of linking to a Reflector (like REF017 A) we needed to put a stations call in the UR field or /repeater.
And so we did. By placing UR:PA0ETE, R1:HB9IAC C, R2:HB9IAC G, MY:PA3ANG in the field the D-Star routing function will find PA0ETE as last heard on PI1DSA B and thus routes my signal to PI1DSA B in Amersfoort. Guess what… John aswered my call and we had a solid QSO!
The great advantage of the E880 as new generation D-Star equipment, most of these fields, so not all, can be loaded automatically by just pressing some buttons. You can program the E880 (using internet and a pc) with all known D-Star repeaters and very simple select a destination repeater.
HB9IAC C is located on a mountain top near Geneva.
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During my stay in the French Alps, a JARL organised D-Star contest was held. I worked apart from local Swiss (HB9) people also radio amateurs from the US, Japan, France the UK and of course some folks from the Netherlands. It was possible to reach the repeater troughout the French Alps all the way to the Mont Blanc. Making D-Star QSO’s on more then 2000 meters ASL was great fun I must say. And remember with CD quality modulation.
For more D-Star related information goto:
www.d-star.nl, www.dstarvlaanderen.be or www.dstarinfo.com.