Brian Schell - D-Star For Beginners ()

D-STAR FOR BEGINNERS

Copyright 2015-2018 by Brian Schell. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or any portion of it in any form.

Written and designed by: Brian Schell

Version Date: July 18, 2018.

ISBN: 1511415096

ISBN-13: 978-1511415095

Printed in the USA of America

D-Star in itself hasnt changed since last year. Its still an immensely popular system for ham radio operators to talk to other hams worldwide without learning code or buying huge antennas. Its fun, its social, and its easy to use once its set up. As the previous edition of the book demonstrated, its not always easy to set a radio up for D-Star. Actually, it used to be a fairly complex procedure that made it difficult to get started. The latter half of 2014 saw the introduction of new Icom radios that vastly simplified programming and setup, making it much easier to get started.

Second Edition Notes:

The sections on the DV-Dongle and DVAP, other than minor editing, have not changed much. Other than the brief DVAP section on Raspberry Pi, there hasnt been much development with these two products.

The section on the Icom IC-92AD has been revised and mostly rewritten for clarity and more examples. Sometime between the publication of the previous edition and this one, Icom has discontinued the 92AD. They are still widely available and very popular, so I have not removed the section; several of the older Icom radios use the same procedure for programming, so it still has value. Future editions will probably see at least the addition of one of the newer Icom handhelds.

I have added an entirely new section on the Icom 5100A radios. This far more modern radio is going to be the face of the future for D-Star. With a large touch screen, pre-programmed database, memories accessible by SD card, and included programming software, this new radio is quite a bit easier and more powerful than the previous generations.

And remember, the whole point of the book is to get you up and running quickly by eliminating the technical jargon and information you dont need to begin. Theres a seemingly endless amount of technology and number of protocols and standards involved with the hardware and repeater side of D-Star, and were going to ignore a lot of that here. The book isnt about setting up your own repeater; its about setting up your personal radio or computer. Once youre connecting and talking on the repeaters, reflectors, and with other D-Star users, youll find that theres still a lot more you can research and learn about D-Star that isnt included here.

Enjoy learning it all, and Ill talk to you on D-Star.

Brian Schell, KD8OTD

KD8OTD@gmail.com

D-STAR (Digital Smart Technologies for Amateur Radio) is an FDMA and GMSK digital voice and data protocol specification developed in the late 1990s as the result of research by the Japan Amateur Radio League to investigate digital technologies for amateur radio. - Wikipedia

Thats a mouthful. Basically, its a way of merging amateur radio and the Internet to allow a form of digital communications.

The beauty of D-Star is that it allows this communications in several ways:

1. Radio Only. You can use your handheld radio to connect with a local repeater that is D-Star enabled, and then use that link to talk to people elsewhere in the world.
2. DVAP. With a DVAP, you can plug a little dongle into your computer. Then you can use your own local handheld or base radio to transmit to the computer, which takes your voice and transfers it over the Internet to other repeaters, reflectors, and users. This is essentially the same thing as the previous option, but this works if there is no local repeater in your area.
3. DV-Dongle. Another very popular use of D-Star is to just plug a dongle and a microphone into your PC and talk to hams around the world through the Internet. This is very similar to using Skype or another VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) system, as no radio is required.
4. Depending on what hardware you have, you may not be able to use all the information in this book, but at least skim everything, even if you don't have the exact equipment the chapter discusses. We start out explaining the basic way D-Star and D-Star programming works in general. Then we move on to cover the DV-Dongle approach to D-Star, and then we talk about programming two specific example radios to use with D-Star. Lastly, we get into using the DVAP to combine the other approaches.

Its extremely flexible, and the sheer number of options is what tends to overwhelm people. Depending on the age of your D-Star radio, it can be either fairly complex or relatively easy to set up D-Star on your radio the first time. After its all done in the beginning, then its just a matter of how far you want to go with it.

The first major requirement is that in order to use the D-Star system, you must be a licensed amateur radio operator (ham). If you arent a ham radio operator, then thats the necessary first step. In the USA, there are three main levels of license: Technician, General, and Amateur Extra. Technician is the beginning level, and its not that hard to attain. The Technician license is all you need to do everything D-Star offers. The higher-level licenses will allow you to do other fun things with your radio, but they arent necessary at all to get all the benefits of D-Star.

But Im Not a Ham!

If you arent already a licensed amateur radio operator, you will need to become one to proceed. A great place to start if you arent already licensed is the ARRL Ham Radio License Manual. Its the book that gets most hams started. With that out of the way, everything else in this book will assume you are a licensed amateur. Again, it doesnt really matter which level of license you have for D-Star, just get licensed.

Is D-Star Really Radio?

There has always been controversy over D-Star by purists who insist that it isnt real radio. Theres really no reason to debate this, its really just a matter of how you use it. If you are holding a handheld radio and using it to connect to local repeater that connects through the Internet to a repeater in Sweden that is being used by a Swedish ham who is also holding a radio in his hand, its hard to argue that this isnt real radio. Its Internet-assisted radio, but there are still actual radios involved on both ends.

On the other hand, if you are sitting at your desk, talking into a microphone connected to your computer and D-Star Dongle, with no radio in sight, and you are connected through D-Star to a user in Toronto who is running the same setup on his computer, is that real radio? Probably not, since theres no over-the-air radio transmission involved anywhere in the process. Its really no different from talking on Skype.

The reason D-Star users need to be licensed hams is that you dont know what the person on the other end of the connection is using. If you are on the computer and connecting to a ham in Sydney Australia, you dont know if he or she is on a cheap old PC or sitting in front of a radio system that cost more than your car. You just cant tell, so the licensing requirement is there to cover all the possibilities.