Ben Sutton

Just a quick post to let people know what we’ve been working on the past few months. D-STAR is a digital voice and data protocol for amateur radio. Its Wikipedia page is fairly comprehensive. Its an enjoyable mode mainly due to the ease of communication with other people around the world.

During the past few months we have set up D-STAR repeaters in Folkestone and Ashford. I helped set up the gateways. The standard configuration of a gateway is to run Cent OS and the G2 software distributed by Icom. There are many aspects to experiment with including DPRS, a digital positioning system similar to APRS and low and high speed data communication. Both GB7FK and GB7DX are connected to the K5TIT worldwide network via their respective gateways. Activity on the repeaters can be viewed on their last heard page.

There are many other D-STAR repeaters on the air around the UK. I plan on writing a fair bit more on specific features of D-STAR - let me know if your interested. In the mean time, if your near a gateway and want to give me a shout I can be reached via M0TUX on GB7FK port B.

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Read the rest of the review at Pan Linux.