Georgia D-STAR News

• Georgia News Combines with Southeastern US News - To make it a little easier to manage, The two news sections are being combined. The Southeastern US News may be found here
• KJ4BDF Repeater - A little late with the news, but the KJ4BDF repeater is now in the air. It is located at WA4YIH's QTH in Buford GA with only a relatively small coverage area. The repeater is intended for portable emergency and demonstration use. The repeater is on a container approximately 2ft square and is powered completely by 12VDC, including the computer.
• D-STAR Field Day - 1 July 2008 - The GARS (www.GARS.org) W4GR group setup a D-STAR Field Day demonstration. See the pictures here
• Atlanta Net - 8 June 2008 - This evening we held the Atlanta Area net with John Davis WB4QDX as net control. 15 Check-ins this evening. This week the W5SHV repeater in Shreveport, and the KJ4BDF repeater in Buford joined the net. The KI4SBA repeater had some connectivity issues, but all other repeaters seemed to work well.
• Atlanta Hamfest - 7 June 2008 - The DSTARINFO group had a booth at the hamfest and we also had a DSTAR forum. The booth stayed busy all day long and the forum was well attended. There were a few IC-91AD radios that had never talked on D-STAR that got programmed to talk on the local KJ4BDF repeater and their owners made their first D-STAR QSOs.
• Atlanta Net - 1 June 2008 - This evening we held the Atlanta Area net with John Davis WB4QDX as net control. 12 Check-ins this evening, including K5AI from Shreveport LA. All of the repeater linking seemed to work without a hitch this evening.
• Southwest District Georgia ARES Meeting - 31 May 2008 - Gene Clark W4AYK (DEC) Held a well attended meeting that brought about 30 ARES members from Southwest Georgia as well as Florida. Afterwards, about half of the folks adjourned to Blackbeard's where All-You-Can-Eat was combined with All-You-Can-Talk! The agenda for the day was as follows:

   What is ARES?  Gene Clark, W4AYK, DEC Southwest Georgia
     Comments on Structure of ARRL and ARES
     Comments on the GA ARES Database
  Upcoming Season and Skywarn
     Mike Brown KE4FGF, DEC NWS Tallahassee
     Bob Goree NWS, Tallahassee.
  Deployment of New Systems in SOWEGA (What’s Happening at our Hospitals?)
     Barry Kanne, W4TGA
  DSTAR Technology and New Deployment
     Ed Woodrick WA4YIH 
        DSTAR Demonstration
  Basic Communication in Emergencies:  Methods and Modes
      Tom Olley, KG4VUB
  What Served Agencies May Need from Hams
      Dave Hand, WB4HYP and Tom Brewer, K5MET of FEMA.  

• Atlanta Net - 25 May 2008 - the linked repeater worked much better this time. All of the repeaters linked up and no issues were found in the linking. Of course it does help if Net Control has a good signal. Net control (WA4YIH) received reports that his signal was having problems, so he switched from WD4STR to KI4SBA and things got better. We had 9 check-ins this evening, not too bad for a Memorial Day Weekend
• Peachtree City D-STAR Class - 19 April 2008
  ARES sponsored D-STAR classes for the surrounding area.