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My opinions and views :
Please read but
don’t take it too serious as we all are entitled to ones own point
of view.
1)
dStar : My opinion is that the JARL made a serious
error in their decision to go for a proprietary vocoder in the dstar
protocol.
The point is that
one could have given up a small portion of the digital side in order to
get an open source platform and now
many others that have excellent throughputs.
This has denied many experimentation in this field which
has deceived the very purpose of self tuition.
Personally I feel this choice was more favoured to the
adaptation of the vocoder in the commercial range of radios where the
actual money will be recovered for R&D.
I am still to do some tests myself but am certain at this
point that the iDAS and Nextedge are basically dStar with some firmware
changes.We are seeing digital platforms across a wide range of radio
communication products and this covers high end Military communications
down to the license free radios – in the “race “ for a
digital platform the Ham aim has been retarded.
I am more in favour of P25 at this point having tested my
own equipment and that C4FM is just as good as dStar- in fact better for
good reasons.
Having said this I decided to go with the dStar evolvement
and have two ID-880 radios and have just installed a dStar repeater on
UHF in our area.
At the end of the day one can spend time and energy
fighting the decisions but the measure of such progress is a lost entity
.
We have since found a cheap way to extend the range of the
current dStar repeaters and this is exciting seeing that one does not require
dedicated dStar resources /internet at each and every site .I hope others
take on this challenge and provide coverage in areas where before it did
not make sense due to cost .
See other pages for details on the crossbanding of dStar
with my IC-2800.
2)I am disappointed in the design of dStar having a purely
single mode operation .
As I mentioned P25 has a mixed mode which is really great
for migration from analogue to digital .
3)Years down the line I still feel that the Amateur
manufacturers could add RSSI voting as majority of the radios sold are
used on some form of linked system .
My opinion on the use of cellphones in Ham radio:
Today I have been experimenting with a ptt application
called "Loudtalks" on the Blackberry.An awsome ptt application
and the audio through the car kit is unbelievably loud and perfect.
This has broadcast channels availible and has open ended possabilities.
The way I see the future is that every Ham would be able to monitor their
favourite reflector or repeater-being able to talk back is possible(with
password for licensed hams.)
This has the capabilities of reaching every ham with a blackberry or
Android and windows phone wherever they are in the world.
To go one step further the application is available for PC operation.
The future is here and this application can also use WIFI.
This means that all hams could monitor/future talkback from any internet
connected system / or user-at any time- at work with earphones. The
future of ham radio is the use of a cellphone unit.
The technology is here - together with the current dstar_allstar the
listenership could be greatly increased.
Shopping centred and the like where there is no repeater coverage-access
will be possible via loudtalks.
I am creating a channel for anyone that wants to test with me .
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