For Immediate Release, 25 June 2012

Lorain County Wireless Operators

LORAIN COUNTY OHIO - We are very pleased to announce another amateur radio initiative from Ohio and a few of the guys that brought you the Northern Ohio Digital Interconnect Group, Reflectors 38 & 39 and the Ohio Wide D-STAR  Net.  The Lorain County Wireless Operators, LCWO.

Lorain County Wireless Operators was formed in an effort to advance amateur radio in the Great Lakes and surrounding areas. LCWO’s four core operators simply want grow amateur radio by showcasing all that Ham Radio has to offer. This group will be complimented by Guest Operators who have experience in specialized areas of operation. The operators will focus their on the air time in unique areas bringing the public’s attention to amateur radio by operating special events stations and also contesting as well as supporting area clubs & public service groups. Our call, NW8S, will support LOTW, eQSL and direct QSL during all events. LCWO has a D-STAR repeater on the air in the downtown Lorain Ohio area that is complimented with a reflector. Although typically linked to REF038A it will be used for experimental D-STAR operations. We will utilize all segments of the spectrum; HF, VHF, UHF, SHF, along with existing and experimental modes during our events.

Look for an announcement regarding our first event in the very near future. The final details of which are being worked through as we speak.

We hope that our efforts to further amateur communications will inspire others to become licensed or more active in a hobby that can be very rewarding and satisfying. Regardless if its talking across town on a local repeater, traffic handling, severe weather, providing relief communications after a disaster or making a new friend in a far away country using Morse Code or a cutting edge mode yet invented there is something for everyone.

http://www.nw8s.com/

https://www.facebook.com/LorainCountyWirelessOperators

Jeff Evans KB8ZUN

Lots of excitement about D-STAR, that’s what happened at Dayton.

It started on Thursday evening at Marion’s Pizza with the Dayton Amateur Radio Club sponsoring a D-STAR gathering. There were a lot of people putting faces to call signs that we talked to on a regular basis.

On Friday morning, we started with the DSTAR InfoCon. 3 hours of D-STAR training for those new to D-STAR led by John WB4QDX. While John held class, Ed WA4YIH opened the DSTARInfo / Georgia D-STAR booth. As the doors opened, throngs of people swarmed the building and the D-STAR booths got busy. Aside from the Icom booth in the main hall, Icom’s D-STAR booth was manned by the Trust Server Team and Dan Smith of D-RATS fame. Georgia D-STAR presented the D-STAR Info booth with a number of helpers throughout the weekend, including Jim Moen of Star*Board fame.

Next door we had the Internet Labs booth with the DVDongle and DVAP.

New to Dayton was Newfield Design and their ProHam D-STAR repeater controller and Northwest Digital Radio with their UDR56K4 radio. Both of these groups exhibited their products. They are quite interesting and will help D-STAR to the next level.

The main D-STAR forum on Friday filled the largest forum room and a  number of great presentations, including my own “No More Programming” presentation that shows you how easy it is to program your radio with information from DSTARInfo, and then talks about the ID-31A that comes preprogrammed from the factory!!!!

On Thursday evening, as had D-STAR Across America with a full room of D-STAR lunatics, whoops, I meant enthusiasts. Ray Novak, Icom America’s General Manager gave a presentation on the history of D-STAR, the reason why many of the choices were made during the design process.

Ken Atkisson talked about DPlusMon and DPlusReport, two tools that are invaluable to repeater administrators and net controls. David Lake gave an update on his project and along with the US Trust Server Team, showed off a prototype repeater. Not too amazing, unless you saw it. A full D-STAR repeater, including the gateway computer in a form factor that would fit inside a shoe box! We also heard from a number of other speakers throughout the evening.

Now many of you may have heard the Yaesu was supposed to show a new digital radio at Dayton, and they did, the FT-1D. There wasn’t much fanfare behind it, and there’s still a lot of speculation about it. What reliable sources have determined is that it is a Tier 1 DMR radio. Tier 1 DMR radios are relatively new and not sold in the US. The Tier 1 DMR radio is currently being sold in Europe as a non-licensed device, similar to the FCC FRS service. An interesting aspect is that the speaker – mic has a camera embedded in it, to allow users to send pictures. Not much else is known about the radio.

The one thing that was the most obvious is that there is a continued, even renewed source of enthusiasm in D-STAR. The UDR56K4 is a new paradigm in radio. AA4RC teased us with some new items coming down the road. One of the most exciting was that there were a lot of areas, previously not covered by D-STAR that have just become or soon will be covered. There was a lot of chatter about additional things in the pipeline. There was a lot of behind-the-scenes discussions going on, some hopefully leading to better collaboration behind many of the developers of D-STAR.

And to top it off, we found out the ID-31A sold out rather early in the weekend, evidently people are really liking the “No programming” concept of the new radio which comes from the factory preloaded with the worldwide D-STAR repeaters.

So don’t wait until it’s too late, go ahead and start making your plans for next year, it’s going to be exciting!

Ed WA4YIH

• Little Falls, covering both Brainerd and St. Cloud.
• Fargo, supporting the US Coast Guard Auxiliary Amateurs for flood relief /boat and helicopter support
• Duluth for MS150 / Grandma's etc.

In the Twin Cities we are up to four possibly five gateway linked repeaters:

• 444.325 Ramsey County
• 145.11 Hennepin County
• 1283.3 Hennepin County

Erik, NY9D   www.14567.org

As with NODIG’s reflector ports designated for ARES, EMA and Skywarn, NODIG does not manage operations for these groups but provides local, state, regional and national linking capabilities. This offers a more spectral efficient venue for Ecomms than that of traditional analog repeaters. These groups also have the ability to pass data, text messaging and manage asset location through DPRS with the system.

NODIGS’s assets and linking partners reach much of the state’s population concentrations with D-STAR equipment in 35% of Ohio’s 88 counties. Many of these locations having had installed D-STAR capable equipment in hospitals and government offices. This reflects a RF footprint of roughly half the state’s counties.

For more information please visit www.nodig.us or http://www.facebook.com/pages/Northern-Ohio-Digital-Interconnect-Group/145438878885464

D-STAR Day will be held at the Radisson Park Inn Sharon hotel in West Middlesex, PA., on Saturday January 28th, 2012. Starting at 9 AM and finishing at 4 PM.

We believe about 100 hams will attend from the local area including Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Akron/Canton, Cleveland and Erie. D-STAR Day will include presentations from Icom and other D-STAR experts. If you want to learn more about D-STAR, this is your chance.

ICOM America is excited to attend D-STAR Day. Presenting will be ICOM Division Manager - Amateur and Receiver Products - Ray Novak, N9JA. Staff from DX Engineering and Superbertha.com will be in attendance as well!

In addition to Ray Novak, N9JA – here are some of the other attendees to D-STAR Day:

• Founder of the Georgia Statewide D Star network and D-Rats expert – John Davis, WB4QDX
• The inventor of the DV Dongle – Robin Cutshaw, AA4RC
• ARRL Atlantic Division Director Bill Edgar, N3LLR
• ARRL Western Pennsylvania Section Manager – John Rodgers, N3MSE

There will also be a “field trip” for all participants to nearby (1 mile away) Amateur Radio station K3LR

For more information http://www.dstarday.com/

Here's their January 2012 Newsletter

From January 9, 2012 to February 9, 2012, qualifying clubs are required to place a US$3,0000* deposit on a 70cm D-STAR repeater with Icom America Inc. (*plus freight and applicable taxes)

Bonus: If you can meet the following requirements within 90-days from the date of purchase, Icom will refund the US$3,0000* deposit. (*plus freight and applicable taxes)

• Install in permanent location identified at the time of purchase
• Fully operational on the USROOT trust server with Icom G2 Gateway Software and within the requirements outlined by the USROOT Administration team
• Minimum of 10 users registered on the "Gateway"
• Guarantee system on air for minimum of 1 year from date of installation

This program is limited to clubs located in priority areas listed below or not within an existing D-STAR Repeater (100 Aeronautical Mile Radius). Send a club biography and an outline of how D-STAR will be used in your community to DSTAR.Promo@icomamerica.com to see if your club qualifies.

Priority areas:

Make plans early for the big event.  Come enjoy a casual and relaxing time with friends you have made on the air prior to the big show.

Details can be found at the following Hamvention® web site: http://www.hamvention.org/events.php#dstar . 

Attention to the updated D-STAR frequencies and call signs in the Dayton area, for some have changed.  Handheld coverage has greatly improved and is easily accessible from Hamvention® with our new installation and location of the W8RTL system.

Also note that during Hamvention® week one of the W8RTL repeaters will be linked to Reflector 38C thanks to the Northern Ohio Digital Interconnect Group (NODIG).

Hope to see you there.

Joe – KA8C

Administradors ED3YAK C, Repetidor D-Star de Barcelona
Webmaster D-Star Catalunya

• Changed reflector discovery code so it will dynamically find new reflectors and changed IP's without restart. 
• The reflector limit moved from 50 to 1000.
• Added support for modules D (for repeaters with that are for data / D-Rats testing) and E (for remote Echotest).
• You can now test your Internet connection by linking to a remote gateway's module E and keying up with an echo test (using CQCQCQ in urcall).  Don't forget to unlink! :)
• Also, DV Dongle users will be able to run echo tests through a connected gateway using module E.  This will require DVTool-2.0 beta 5 or later.
• Some of the messages printed to dplus.log have been shortened.  I'm trying to cut back on the volume inthat log file.  Note that this will require new versions of Monlink, DPlusReport, and others that parse the logs.

Hopefully your local repeater is already running dplus version 2.2h, in which case the change of IP address will be automatically detected before you read this message.

You can see the status of REF006 from the standard web page: http://ref006.dstargateway.org

Thanks must go to Robin, AA4RC, for upgrade and re-hosting assistance.

73 de Darren, G7LWT

On behalf of the ODWN & NODIG we would like to thank all that helped the Ohio Wide D-STAR Net, OWDN, become the premier D-STAR net in the state during 2011!

We have come an incredibly long way from our first net last January were we experienced dropped links, internet issues and lost packets. Over the course of the year NODIG's IT and RF Managers, along with their support teams, have worked hard to build a solid and reliable system capable of linking the entire state seamlessly.

Also worthy of mention are the OWDN Net Controls having run 53 nets in full and on time throughout the year.

A few statistics, and to some benchmarks we intend to surpass next year! The OWDN ran a total of 53 sessions with 1093 check ins clocking a total of 845+ man hours. Just over 30% of Ohio’s 88 counties, 27 total, are currently touched by the OWDN representing 44 cities. Of Ohio’s 16 D-STAR repeater sponsors 14 participate in the OWDN along with several out of state sites.

Please visit the net on Sunday evenings, Reflector 38 Alpha, at 8:00PM EST or our Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Northern-Ohio-Digital-Interconnect-Group/145438878885464

The OWDN and NODIG wish you a healthy and prosperous new year!

73, Jeff Evans, KB8ZUN

Grand Sierra Resort in Reno.

Since 2001 Nevada Amateur Radio Repeaters, Inc. (NARRI) sponsored the Annual VoIP IRLP Conference that is held in the Spring. Prior to 2012 the conference was held in Las Vegas as a separate event. Now it is part of EMCOMMWEST event. Each year the meeting has broadened its scope and now includes all the major VoIP systems in use by the amateur radio community, i.e., IRLP, Echo link, EchoIRLP, All Star, D-Star and DV Dongle. See the program for topical speakers.

Here is a summary of details:

It is the hopes of NV Section leadership that this combo will alternate yearly between Reno and Las Vegas. We look forward to seeing you in Reno for the 10th annual VoIP Conference and EmCommWest 2012.

Kent W7AOR Chair NARRI VP EmCommWest

For more information Ham Radio in Hollywood: Comedian Tim Allen Stars as Radio Amateur on New TV Show

Georiga D-STAR had a table at the event and a number of folks dropped by to say hello.

And of course the big event was when the D-STAR Santa dropped by.

But Santa (Patrick W4VZB)  walks away with the Grand Prize a Kenwood TS-590!

Take a look at some of the photos at Flickr. There's a number of your D-STAR stars in the show!

Here's the link to HamNation.  You can see Gordon in a D-STAR QSO with Japan, Robin talks about the DVAP at about 36:00.

www.kidsinamateurradio.net

This event differs from previous D-STAR contests that have taken place over the last few years. Instead of competing for numbers of contacted call signs, the goal this year is to encourage D-STAR operators to communicate through as many D-STAR repeaters and with other D-STAR operators across the globe. The more countries a user contacts during the time period, the more entries in the prize pool they will have. Icom Inc. has a total of fifteen of the forthcoming ID-31E D-STAR UHF handheld transceivers available as prizes for this event.

Participation in the contest is via DV mode. All operators who submit an approved log will be eligible for the draw and 15 (fifteen) winners will be randomly selected to each win a prize. To qualify for the draw:

• You need make a contact through at least one repeater in your own country.
• Contact D-STAR users in 5 foreign countries and you will double your chances to win a prize.
• Contact D-STAR users in 10 foreign countries and you will triple your chances to win a prize.
• Contact D-STAR users in more than 20 foreign countries and you will quadruple your chances to win a prize.

More detailed information will be available on the following website from the 10th October 2011: Icom Inc. D-STAR Party Microsite.

Go on, take part and join the worldwide D-STAR QSO party in November!

For more details about D-STAR (Digital Smart Technology for Amateur Radio) visit the Icom UK D-STAR microsite.

Icom Marketing: marketing@icomuk.co.uk

D-RATS is a multi-platform tool for use with D-STAR. Its primary focus in development was to aid first responders, ARES & RACES, in Washington County Oregon. It has evolved into a global Ecomm software suite for data communications. It supports such things as instant messaging, Email, HICS 260, ICS 213 and Radiograms with canned templates. It also allows for easy file sharing, asset tracking and “Real Time” map overlays.

As with all NODIG assets it will be open for general use by all amateurs. It may also be used by ARES groups, EMA offices, Skywarn programs, Red Cross offices and hamfest activities at will.

The reflector may be accessed by making your host address in D-RATS ratflector.nodig.us . D-RATS software may be obtained by going to http://www.d-rats.com/. Instructions will be posted at www.nodig.us to help you along if necessary.

Contact: Jeff Evans / KB8ZUN 

kb8zun@gmail.com

IC-80, ID-880, IC-92.

Programming your radio is as simple as download, import, send to radio!

www.DSTARInfo.com

For those of you with Icom’s software and IC-80, ID-880, and IC-92, DSTARInfo now provides “Import Files” for your area. By importing the files, your radio memories will be loaded with all of the repeaters in the specified area. Provides basic talking (i.e. module in RPT1 and G in RPT20).

In addition, DSTARInfo has Repeater Lists which are suitable for loading into the software for DR mode or selecting repeaters.

If there are existing repeaters in the group of memories that you are importing to, they may be overwritten.

The exact sequence varies slightly depending on the version of software.

These files are great for loading into radios just purchased by your friends or hamfests.

Awesome for loading into your radio before taking a trip!

The files are simple CSV files that may be opened and edited in a variety of programs, including Excel. Feel free to edit the files before importing. The import files show the “Name” as just the call sign of the repeater, you can change them to match your naming conventions.

All US files currently available. Other portions of the world coming shortly.

Files are updated nightly