Don’t switch to CQCQCQ; leave it like this while you talk.  Anything you say will be repeated by W6CO…amaze your friends!

Here’s an important detail about this kind of routing.  If I am monitoring here in Napa, I will hear you call me from Tampa but you will be so clear that it will sound like you are right here in town.  I won’t be able to talk back to you unless I set my UR: to the repeater you are using.  Here is what my call sign table needs to look like in order to be heard by you:

There are a couple of ways I can do this but I need to know where you are calling from so your first call should sound like this:

“N6XN, this is N6RRR calling from Tampa through the KJ4ARB repeater port B”.  Repeat this a couple of times and then give me time to set my radio as shown below.  I can also call you back without knowing the repeater by pressing my “one-touch” button on the IC91,  (lower right of keypad)  See page 47 for more details.  All current DStar radios have a “one-touch” button somewhere.

These changes will be temporary.  If I move off frequency, when I dial back the call signs will have been restored to the original memory settings.

Notice the UR: starts with a slash.  That tells the controller on KJ4ARB to find W6CO  B and pass any audio it hears to that repeater.  This works really well except for one peculiar condition:  Let’s say that W6CO  B is linked to REF014 and it just so happens that KJ4ARB B is also linked to REF014.  You would be creating a dual-route that probably would be a real train wreck.  At the very least you would be driving people nuts with the lost packets and garble.  There are ways to check before hand if something is linked (as I showed you above) or by using a PC connected to the web.  No PC handy?  Listen awhile or put out a general call and ask whoever answers.  If you hear nobody, (probably) just set it up like the above example and go for it.  No harm, no foul.  Another caution refers to interference with a QSO already in progress on the distant repeater.  If you set your UR: as in the examples above, and the remote repeater is in use, you will get a cryptic message on your display showing “rpt?”.  Wait a bit and try again.  If you set your UR: to link to a distant repeater, for example KJ4AR BL if that repeater is busy your link will still work but you won’t hear anything until the party that is currently talking finishes and releases his PTT.  You will then hear the next station to transmit and all those afterwards. Just to be on the safe side, after you complete a link, wait 2 or 3 minutes before talking. 3 minutes is max because DStar repeaters are equipped with 3 minute timeout timers that cannot be easily changed so that’s the max transmission time for most machines.

If you do have a PC handy, there are a number of “configurators” out there that will help you with programming.
Here is one that is popular:http://www.dstarinfo.com/Calculator/DSTAR%20Web%20Calculator.aspx?Source=WA6IRC

Here is a handy URL that will give you some examples of programming along with additional information on DStar: http://www.ladstar.org/config.htm

Here’s another URL  that will give you lots of information about how to look at reflector usage and other neat stuff:  http://w6dhs.org/ On this site you can find links to Dstarusers.org and find a list of reflector “dashboards”.  These can be really handy if you are near a PC but not much use if you operate mobile.

Dstar In Japan

US amateurs have only recently been able to communicate with Japanese hams via Dstar.  Seems ironic since the Radios, and the original mode architecture came from there.

The problem was, a key part of the Dstar system is the trust server.  In the US, the trust server is run by the K5TIT group in Texas.  Japanese hams have their own trust server and the two don’t talk.  What’s more, in the US, we have come to depend on Dplus programming on our gateways to let us communicate in the fashion described  in the body of this article.  In Japan, they don’t use Dplus, many are even unaware of it;  communications are carried out as described in your Icom manual.

That doesn’t mean we can’t talk to the JA folks though.  The first thing to be aware of is the time and date difference between there and here.  They are 7 hours earlier than us so if we are used to hamming on the way to work, most of Japan is fast asleep.  On our way home, and during our evening hours, they are at work.  It’s often best to wait until the weekend but be aware of the international date line;  they are on the other side of it so it is often “tomorrow” there.

In recent months, Japanese amateurs have been calling into the US by doing “repeater routing”  They will put a repeater callsign into the UR field preceded by a slash to look like this:

If you are listening on some other repeater, such as W6CO  B we are probably all hearing K6MDD via a reflector.  All stations listening to the reflector on any repeater will hear the same thing.

A very important part of the JA’s transmission will be in the 20 character message that scrolls across your display.  Most US hams just put something simple in there like, John in Napa but the Japanese ham will put in something like this: “Please set your to /JP1YJXA”.  He will also ask you to do that during his call.  You may hear something like this:  “CQ Dstar Calling CQ from Northern Japan. Please set your reply to JP1YJX A. This is JI1BQW over.”

For more details see this link http://www.ji1bqw.com/how_to_call_japan_on_d-star_e.html

He will then stand by for several minutes to give you time to set your radio.  If you have the Japanese repeaters already set in your memory buffers this will only take a second.  Just dial in the new UR, select /JP1YJXA and reply to the calling station.  Speak slowly and distinctly and announce the repeater callsign and module you are calling through.  The Japanese ham will not need to change anything on his end because he knows, since you are calling him, that you are able to hear him.

Note: There are no 2-meter Dstar repeaters in Japan.  Their A-modules are all mostly 450 mHz and the B-modules are mostly 1.2 gHz.  I say “mostly” because the convention there is which ever module is first to be placed is A and the next module is B regardless of the band.  Usually though, it’s A=450 mHz and B=1.2 gHz. Having said that though, it does not matter to us unless we plan to visit Japan and operated from there.

Here is a partial list of the current Dstar repeaters in Japan.  If you input these callsigns, preceded by a slash, to your UR memory, you will be able to dial them up in seconds.

These are only the earliest repeaters on line with Dstar.  An internet search will find you many many more.

Icom D-Star  DR Mode

January, 2010

Icom has superceded two of it’s popular Dstar radios.  The IC91AD handheld transceiver and the ID800 have been replaced by the IC80AD and the ID880H respectively.  While not a generational advance, these two radios incorporate a couple of important features that make them stand out.

The first advance is the programming software.  For the first time, Icom is providing the software free of charge.  The same software is used on both radios and for people familiar with the earlier versions, works very much the same.

The second feature, also an advance in programming is related to the something Icom calls the DR mode.  The manual is not much help in explaining this mode because of the differences between the way we use Dstar and the way it is used in Japan.  The folks at K6MDD, primarily Tim, K6BIV and Larry, WW6USA have pretty much led the way in the use of this mode.

What is DR mode and why should I use it?

If you use your radio in a fixed location such as a home station and only have one or two repeaters available to you, then the DR mode offers little advantage.  But if you travel out of your home area where other repeaters are likely to be encountered, then DR mode offers a huge advantage in the programming and in the operation of the radio.

Here’s why:

When D-Star was new, before Dplus, we programmed everything into our radios.  There were not many repeaters and we had lots of memory slots.  It was fairly easy to program the entire country into our radios even though we were not likely to ever travel that much.  But as more and more repeaters came on-line, the process became laborious and it was easy to fall behind.  Then Dplus came along and the programming efforts required grew exponentially because of the extra features.  Most radios ran out of memory slots.  Here is an example of the programming for just two repeaters, using D-Star G2, and Dplus:

The original way, before Dplus: (not all fields shown)

The same two repeaters after Dplus:

As you can see, Dplus changed only the “Your” field but because each line was a record, any change to any field changed the entire line.

DR Mode has returned  sanity to programming your radio.  We now have a 300 memory slots called “Repeater List”.  In this group of memories we can enter the repeater information in a briefer format (some features such as digital squelch not available) and the “Your” field can now be separated from the line and replaced by any UR call in the GRP UR memory.  The GRP UR memories are found in the programming software under “call sign” and contain 60 fields for all those Dplus functions.  In the DR mode, the user simply enters the repeater info such as frequency, offset, repeater callsign, repeater name, and checks “use as R1″.  Once DR Mode is enabled, by a single click of the <DR> button, the user selects GRP UR and selects the Dplus function required.  If anything other than CQCQCQ is selected, the R2 slot will be populated with the repeater callsign plus G for gateway.  If CQCQCQ is selected, the radio assumes you want to talk only on the local repeater and the R2 (gateway slot) is cleared.  The final step is to add a UR other than CQCQCQ and when you select that as your URcall, the R2 (gateway) slot remains populated.  Some ops are using DR CQ  or DR CQ CQ as a UR, but in reality almost anything works.  I have tried <VOICE>  <YAKYAK> and <RAGCHEW> with success.  In the end it does not really matter since the only person other than you who will ever see it is the system admin and he doesn’t care what you use.

The Dplus functions are also simplified by adding the needed control URs.  Unlinking can be accomplished by having a single <U> in the 8th position but it helps identify it to the operator by entering it as < UNLINK U >  just be sure the U is in the 8th position.

I tried simplifying the other functions in a similar manner but could not get them to work.  Examples:

< ECHO   E > should have produced the Dplus talkback feature but it did not.  Apparently you need the repeater’s callsign in the field also.

< QUERY  I >  should have produced Robin’s voice telling us “Remote System Linked” but that did not work either.  By returning it to < W6CO   I > it worked as it should have.

In any case, once in DR mode you can jump from UR to UR very easily by just spinning the tuning knob.  Very nice when mobile!

It still makes sense to use the original programming method if you just use a few repeaters but for operators that move around, DR mode simplifies things immensely.

We’ll undoubtedly have updates to this page as the users discover other tricks with the 80 and 880 radios and as Icom brings out new Dstar models it is likely that they too will incorporated the DR mode.