This episode of HamTalk Live is brought to you
by Tower Electronics. For cables, connectors
and more, call 920 -435 -2973 or visit pl -259
.com and by the HamStation. Get your new radio
or antenna by calling 800 -729 -4373 or go to
hamstation .com. Good evening, everyone. It's
HamTalk Live episode number 47. Setting up your
D -Star rig with John Davis, WB4QDX, recorded
live on Thursday, January 12th, 2017. I'm your
host, Neil Rapp, WB9VPG. Thanks for tuning into
this episode of HamTalk Live. Tonight, we'll
be joined by John Davis, WB4QDX. who will take
your questions about setting up your D -Star
rig. We'll take your calls live after the break.
Last week Dave Anderson K4SV was here to talk
about how you compare radios and try to pick
a good HF rig for you and also beverage antennas
and as Dave Letterman used to say, I don't believe
there's a man woman or child alive. that doesn't
enjoy a lovely beverage. So, if you missed the
show about beverages, you can listen anytime
at HamTalkLive .com or you can listen to us on
one of those podcast things, iTunes, Stitcher,
Google Play. Tune in on SoundCloud or even over
on YouTube. Before we take our first break tonight,
I do want to mention that one of my colleagues
over amateur radio news line has uh... asked
for some prayers bobby best w x four a l a often
does weather segments on news line and is a severe
weather meteorologist for some groups of broadcast
stations uh... in alabama and uh... bobby was
diagnosed with prostate cancer this week this
is his third about with cancer uh... and so uh...
we we would ask that you uh... pray for Bobby
so please join me in prayer for him and we hope
he has a speedy recovery and a successful one
as well. He's just getting started into what
to do about all this so I just want to remember
Bobby and if you're listening Bobby we're behind
you and hope things are going well soon for you.
Well get your D star questions ready after the
interview We'll talk to John for a little bit
and then I'll let you know when it's time to
call and when you call There's a phone number.
You'll need that number is eight one two net
ham one That's eight one two six three eight
four two six one or you can call us on Skype
Our username is just ham talk live You can also
send questions via Twitter. In fact, we already
have a couple of questions on Twitter. Ready
to go and our Twitter handle is at ham talk live
So if you want to join in the conversation, please
do that tell you'll do that But we're gonna talk
to John for a little while first and then I'll
let you know when to call in So I'll be back
with John WB for QDX right after this word from
tower electronics right here on ham talk live
This episode of HamTalk Live is brought to you
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They'll bring you Ham Talk Live. They'll be at
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you HamTalk Live every Thursday night at 9 p
.m. Eastern Time right here at HamTalkLive .com
and if you missed the show you can catch us on
demand on the website or download it from most
popular podcasting websites. Our guest tonight
This is John Davis, WB4QDX. He started in amateur
radio as a novice in 1969 as WN4QDX in Nashville,
Tennessee when he upgraded to general and then
advanced became WB4QDX. He was active on HF and
VHF working a lot of ready and repeaters and
moved to Atlanta in 1981. and he continued to
stay active on VHF and UHF there and upgraded
extra in 2001. John is very active on D -Star
and operates the WD -4 STR repeaters in Lawrenceville,
Georgia and helps with most of the other D -Star
repeaters around Georgia. He is presented on
D -Star at the Dayton Hamvention and was the
moderator of last year's D -Star forum there
as well. John is a member of the Gwinnett Amateur
Radio Society, is active in EMCOM and ARIES as
a district emergency coordinator for the Georgia
section. He's also served as the emergency coordinator
in Gwinnett County, Georgia for seven years and
he is the past Treasurer and Georgia Vice Director
for the Southeastern Repeater Association. So
John, thanks for coming on HamTalk Live. It's
a pleasure to be here. Yeah, I talked to Ray
Novak over at ICOM and he said, you're the guy
I need to have on here because I keep getting
all these D -Star questions and we were talking
before the show. I have not Delved into the digital
VHF and UHF stuff yet. I have helped and and
operated and and built and Everything else on
the analog side of the repeater thing for many
many years, but There's a lot of this that's
going digital and we're going to try to do a
show every once in a while on all of the different
digital formats, but we wanted to focus on D
-Star tonight because the number one question
that I get is how to set up the rig. So we're
going to try to focus on setup tonight. We can
take some other questions, but we're going to
try to kind of focus on that. That's the most
frequently asked question I've had on the show
since we came on the air in February. How do
I set up a D -Star rig? I've got it ID 51. I
have no idea how to use it, how to get it set
up. And so we had a guest earlier back on episode
36 that explained a lot of how the D -Star works
and how to set up some of the older rigs. But
again, most of the questions have been about
the new latest and greatest radios with all the
new features like the ICOM ID 51. So just the
other day had somebody else say, well, I bought
one and it's sitting right here. I have no idea.
how to use it. So why don't you start off walking
us through what you should do to set up one of
these ID51s from ICOM. Sure, sure. You know,
the first thing I would say is the ID51 in my
mind, and I've owned quite a few handhelds over
the years, but even if I were not doing D -Star,
I would probably have an ID51 because it's got
some great features that not only work on D -Star,
but also work on regular analog FM. such as finding
the nearest repeater from what you have in memory.
An ID51 out of the box is a great improvement,
as you said, over some of the early radios. If
you were getting into D -STAR back in the 2010,
11, 12 era, there was a larger learning curve
that you had to go through to set it up. done
this in the class that I've done at Dayton on
Friday mornings of Dayton for the last five years,
going through the older radios and then say,
OK, we've got a new generation of radios like
the ID 51. I'm sure we'll talk about the 5100
mobile as well. But out of the box, I'll say
ICOM was very smart to give you a radio that
you can. Get on the air almost immediately. If
you've got any charge on that battery, turn it
on. The only thing you really need to do is enter
your call sign. Because D -Star transmits your
call sign every time you key the mic. So if you're
an anonymous chunker of radios, then and repeaters,
then you're probably out of luck with this. But
that's all you have to do. It comes with a library,
I'll say, of memories for various D -Star repeaters
around the world, actually. So you can get on
immediately, turn on your ID 51, turn on the
internal GPS, give it a chance to lock up. get
in the menu and say find me the nearest repeater
and it will locate the nearest D star repeater
for you and you are on the air without any other
programming. You can then take it from there
and and do a lot more things with it and we can
talk about that but it's easy to get on the air
immediately and pretty painless. Okay, so you
just need to get the thing turned on charged
up and and make sure you get your call sign in
there and then Anything else about you know,
you said you said it finds the repeater for you
then Is there any other? maybe a little bit past
the very basics that You know things you should
probably do Well, there are a couple of things
that are very handy with this radio. One of the
things is that it accepts a micro SD card. And
don't go out and buy a 64 gig micro SD card.
Buy a four gig, eight gig, a little small inexpensive
one, insert it in the radio. And what that allows
you to do is save and load different memory configurations
that you have stored on that card. Um, and that
brings you to another feature, which is the memories
can be updated very easily. As I mentioned earlier,
it, it comes with, um, probably 750 D star repeaters,
uh, already loaded in the memories. Now it won't
have every one in the country because there are
more than 750. And, uh, but you'll find one probably
close by, especially in the major cities. It
might have two or three ones, uh, different.
different areas loaded. So you can get on the
air immediately with that. The first thing I
would do is put that SD card in and save what
you have in the radio. Just export it to the
SD card right away. I'm going to give you another
resource which is a very good resource for DSTAR
information as well as updating your memory and
that's the website www .dstarinfo. It's a website
that's done by Ed Woodrick, W -A -4 -Y -I -H,
who's also very active in D -STAR, and he's put
this site together. He's also built some very
easy to use programs in there that you can download
and update. your memories in your radio, and
it's very easy to do following the instructions.
In the radio that I have, when I'm going to travel
to another area, let's say I'm going to Los Angeles.
Well, I'll go out to dstarinfo .com, download
the 750 closest repeaters to Los Angeles, California.
and I can do a combination of FM repeaters as
well as D star repeaters. And I will save that
as a CSV file, have that on the SD card. I get
off the plane in LA, turn on my radio, say import,
pick the file name for Los Angeles. About 45
seconds later, I've got the 750 closest repeaters
to Los Angeles, California. So it's very easy
to update your memories. Now one other thing
I'll mention also is the question about registration.
That's something that there's always a lot of
questions about, but it's also an area that can
be misunderstood. Let me just give you a few
helpful hints on that. The first thing is registration
is optional. You do not have to register your
call sign to get on and talk on a D -STAR repeater
or a D -STAR repeater that may be linked to a
reflector which may have one, two, three, four,
a hundred other repeaters linked to it. You do
not have to register to do that. What the registration
does is it allows you to link and unlink the
local repeater that you're transmitting on to
other repeaters, to other reflectors. then if
you also have something like a DV dongle or a
DV access point then you do have to register
for that. Now you want to register on one and
only one repeater and it really doesn't matter
where in the world that you register. As long
as you register and complete the registration
process on one repeater. A question that always
comes up is I try to register on my local repeater
nearest to me. I filled out the initial registration
part and I haven't heard a thing for weeks. Unfortunately,
there are some repeater administrators out there
that don't check for new registrations and therefore
they can kind of leave someone stranded. What
I'll offer in this, I say this in my class at
Dayton, is If you would like to, if you've had
a problem like that, and if you would like to
register, I will be more than happy to process
your registration on my local repeater, WD4STR,
Whiskey Delta 4 Sierra Tango Romeo. That repeater
is located in Georgia. The database is backed
up in two different places. So it's got a very
robust database which will be protected. And
then you can register there if you've had any
trouble. Let's say you've already registered
or attempted to register on another repeater.
You haven't heard anything back. Shoot me an
email. WB4QDX at arrl .net. Let me know your
situation. I can probably help you. getting you
registered on one of our repeaters here, and
then I'll try to work with the US Trust Server
team to eliminate that registration on the original
repeater where you tried to register. So registration
is a three -step process. First thing you do
is go to a repeater and there'll usually be a
registration link. You'll fill out your name,
your email address, your call sign, and a password.
And then it's up to the repeater administrator
to approve your call sign. Once they do that,
you have to log back in and do what's called
a space terminal. What I mean by that is you're
going to go back in, you're going to actually
hit the space bar in a certain location. on that
screen and then you will be completely registered
and that database synchronizes with all the D
-START repeaters around the world. Now there's
some very good instructions on how to do that.
I want to give you a website link which gives
you very detailed instructions on how to do that
and that's at www. dot d -star gateway dot o
-r -g, d -star gateway dot o -r -g. That'll bring
up a document that'll give you step -by -step
instructions with screenshots showing the screens
that you'll have to go through for that. Now
don't register on that site. It's using the screens
from W4DOC, which is a very powerful repeater
here in the Atlanta area. But if you will just
enter WD4STR or look for the registration for
that. I'll be glad to help you if you run into
any problems with that. That's kind of the first
steps of getting on the air, get registered,
and then you can rock and roll from there, Neil.
All great information. Hopefully that helps answer
a lot of the questions we've been getting, and
if not, you'll have a chance to call in here
in a little bit. and ask those. So before we
take a break here, let's take a couple of minutes
to talk about the ID5100 mobile and then we'll
also get into the Kenwood handheld. But go ahead
and talk about the mobile for a minute. Well,
the ID5100 mobile is very similar to the ID5100
handheld. It's a 50 watt mobile. It's a dual
band and dual receive, meaning you can receive
two signals simultaneously, kind of like a Yezu
FT8800, 8900, and also the earlier D -STAR radio,
the 2820. Now you're only receiving one D star
signal at a time and typically what you'll have
is on one side of the radio you may have a D
star repeater local D star repeater to the other
side of the radio you may have your favorite
FM repeater that's what I do is I'm traveling
around town here. The menu system on the 5100
is very very similar to the ID 51. So you will
like that. Let me mention one more thing, and
this applies to both the 51 and the 5100. One
of the, I'll try to say this in a nice way, one
of the shortcomings in the initial setup of a
51 or a 5100, you will notice if you go into
what's called DR mode, Delta Romeo, DR mode,
That makes it very simple to find repeaters.
So find the DR button either on the 5100 or the
51. Press that and you'll see the screen goes
to two sections. One will say to TO and one will
say from. 2 is where you want to go. So highlight
2, you can scroll through that and find a repeater.
From is going to be the local repeater where
you are actually going into. Now, you will typically
in the 2 field for just talking, you're going
to want to set that to CQ, CQ, CQ. Now there
are different CQ, CQ, CQ settings. And unfortunately,
the one that comes up by default is what's called
the local CQ. Now that's fine for talking on
your local repeater, but if your repeater is
linked, your signal will not go outside of the
local repeater unless you use a different CQ.
So what you'll want to do with that is press
2 or highlight the 2. And then you will, in fact
let me turn on my radio here to make sure I'm
giving you the instructions exactly correctly
on that. You will say 2 and then it will say
you will select your call sign or reflector.
Actually the one you want to select is reflector.
And if you press reflector in the menu and then
use reflector. Select that and then you'll notice
in the to field it'll say use reflector CQ CQ
CQ if you've ever been on D star and you only
heard one side of the conversation On a distant
repeater. That's exactly what's happening both
stations are on a repeater the same repeater
and One station will have local CQ set up instead
of use repeater or use reflector. So that other
station is not that their voice is not being
allowed to go outside of their local repeater.
So that's a common mistake that people make.
If you set it to CQ CQ CQ use reflector or use
repeater. It's a little different on different
radios. You'll be all set to go. And that's in
the 2, the TO field. And that's what's simplified.
DR mode is what's simplified with the 51 and
the 5100. You don't have to worry about programming
all these extra fields for each memory. Very
good. And let's take just a minute here to talk
about the new Kenwood. Just a few months ago,
Kenwood came out with their first D -Star radio,
the TH -D74 handheld. It is a tri -bander. It
does a little bit of everything, so tell us just
a little bit about the setup on a TH -D74. Well,
Kenwood did a very good job in introducing their
first D -Star radio, and I really would like
to congratulate Kenwood for coming out and supporting
as the second of the major manufacturers to enter
with a D -Star radio. Therefore, you have two
of the three, I will say, major ones supporting
that, which pretty much establishes D -Star as
kind of... I hate to really use this term, but
I'll say the de facto digital voice standard.
The Kenwood D74 TH -D74, full product name, it's
got some great features. Even without the D -star
aside, being a tri -band, 2 meter, 220, 440,
gives you excellent capabilities. I've never
been on 220 before having this radio. The other
side is it's got, in the Kenwood tradition, it's
got some very good APRS capabilities. And I think,
because I'm still exploring, one of the things
that really interested me on that is being able
to access kind of the full TNC commands, which
I understand the D72 had. And I think that they've
carried that over to the D74 as well. Now on
the DSTAR side, Kenwood's entry into DSTAR, they
made a very good effort at doing that and they're
still coming out with firmware upgrades to fix
some bugs and also kind of correct some of the
maybe the startup things that didn't go exactly
right, but they They also have the ability to
upgrade and update your memories as well with
a small SD card. One thing I really like about
the D74 is that it has, rather than being a...
like the very small, the 2 .5 millimeter 3 -pin
serial interface on it, it's got a small USB.
I don't remember whether it's the mini or the
micro. I think it may be the mini USB. So a standard
USB cable will allow you to connect it to a laptop
or another computer. Their programming software
is free, but I also think the people at RT Systems
have software as well for programming the D74.
Good radio, and I think it continues to improve.
There are a couple of shortcomings, but I think
they'll be corrected as time goes on. One of
them is in D -Star you have the ability to not
only transmit voice, but data along with it,
basically around 1 ,200 BPS data, similar to
packet, but you can do a whole lot more with
that. Now in the ICOM radios, it's easy to just
one cable, connect to a 51 or 5100 mobile, and
you can do some data transfer with free programs
like DRATs, very good program for that. Here
in Georgia in our ARIES group, that's one of
the three digital mode, digital data modes that
we support along with the NBEAMS FLDG package
and Winlink. Unfortunately, right now in the
D74, you can't run things like DRATs and use
that as a data interface, but I think that will
probably improve. It's probably just one or two
firmware upgrades away from having that as well.
But it's a good radio. It's a bit on the pricey
side. Price will probably come down like all
ham radios do. So it's a little bit pricey, but
you're getting a lot of... extra features in
the tri -band and the full APRS capabilities.
Good radio overall. I really do like it. All
right, very good. Well, there are some options
for you if you're looking to get into D -Star
or if you have the D -Star rig already, hopefully
that will help you get on the air. And if not,
we're going to... Take a break and then we're
going to give you a chance to ask questions.
So Get your dialing fingers ready 812 net ham
one is the phone number and we'll be back and
Listen to a word from the ham station and then
we'll take your calls right after this on ham
talk live This episode of Ham Talk Live is brought
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talk live welcome back to ham talk live ham station
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we are there So it's time for your calls now,
so we're going to start taking questions If you
have a question for John that phone number again
is eight one two net ham one eight one two six
three eight four two six one or you can tweet
us at ham talk live or you can Skype us at ham
talk live and We will take your calls with your
questions, and I do have one already from Twitter
from KC7ZIE wants to know about registering with
my local repeater and haven't heard back, which
you've already addressed. So I think we've got
that one covered. And he also wants to know Little
differences between DMR, Fusion, and D -Star
besides price. So again, we're trying to keep
it on setup tonight, but I don't want to pass
over the question. So if you can offer a short
comparison of those, I know that that's hard
to do in a minute or two, but if you can answer
that at least a little bit. voice is something
that's very exciting and I do all three of those
modes because I really like learning about them.
In fact, that's... Getting into the digital modes
with first D star than DMR infusion Has really
revived a lot of my interest in is kind of the
area that I focus on in ham radio Starting with
D star D star is the most widely used Of the
modes. It is a narrowband digital mode It it's
been around since Well, I guess it kind of started
around 2005, but really hit its stride around
2010, and there's, gosh, tens of thousands of
registered DSTAR users around the world. It's
a very good mode, and it has both, as I said
earlier, voice and data capabilities. DMR is
a commercial digital radio standard. It's actually
a standard from in Europe with Etsy, ETSI, European
Telecommunication Standards Institute, I believe
is what that stands for. But it's been brought
over into ham radio applications. It's a little
bit different. It's got a lot of similarities
in that it's true digital and it is a narrower
Signal on the air than an FM signal is not quite
as narrow as D star but very very spectrally
efficient now the difference in DMR is It transmits
in what's called time division multiple access
or TDMA, which means you actually have two conversations,
two separate conversations going on on one RF
carrier. And because it's time division, each
one transmits for only a fraction of a second.
I think it's somewhere around 200 milliseconds,
a fifth of a second, and they alternate back
and forth. But you pick out on your radio, one
of the two time slots or conversations that you
hear on that. DMR is a very robust modulation
scheme because it is used for public safety,
similar to what we see with a lot of large interoperable
systems used as P25 standard. I call DMR the
poor man's P25, but it's had a great adaptation
and growth in amateur radio and there are a lot
of DMR repeaters in the US, North America and
around the world. So it's another mode as well.
Now the final one, Yezu's system fusion. It's
a very good technology. Unfortunately, I think
Yezu's implementation of it and how they've rolled
it out has probably been lacking and that's reflected
in its growth. Yezu tried to really foster the
growth by offering these $500 system fusion repeaters
and it would operate either FM or Fusion. And
I think they've sold several thousand of them.
Unfortunately, most people bought them to replace
their aging FM repeaters using the old Motorola
Micore and and technologies has been around since
the 80s or 70s even there. So many of those repeaters,
unfortunately, will never have a digital signal
go through them with the. adoption of a D -Star
radio by Kenwood and not going with a separate
standard or system fusion. It's kind of fueled
a second wave of growth for D -Star and DMR continues
to grow. So the two of those are kind of the
dominant standards and then you have system fusion
is kind of a very distant. third and the capability
to be able to link repeaters etc. like you can
with DMR and D -Star has been lacking and that's
really stymied a lot of the growth for that.
So that's kind of the shortest version I can
do, Neil. Okay, very good. And we're going to
do some more DMR shows and some system fusion
stuff too in the future. We just kind of try
to spread them out a little bit. So we'll try
to get into some of those later on. But tonight's
D -STAR. So we're focusing on setting up D -STAR
radios. So give us a call if you have a question
about D -STAR. It's 812 -NATAM1 -812 -6384. 261
or you can Skype us at HamTalk Live or you can
send it via Twitter our handle is at HamTalk
Live we have about five minutes left so now's
your chance to ask your questions if there's
anything that you're having trouble with on one
of these D star rigs why let us know 812 net
ham one is the phone number And hopefully we'll
hear from a couple of people yet tonight. And
we want to thank, let me get the name up here,
or the call sign, KC7ZIE for tweeting in tonight.
Oh, I have another one on Twitter from KB2YSI.
Wants to know, is an IC7100 still compatible
with the newer Radios in D -Star? Yes, it is.
I have one of those. I'm radio poor as you can
see. Yeah, you have one of everything, right?
Quite a few I had to be careful a couple of months
ago I was on a local net talking about the number
of radios that I have my I didn't notice But
my xyl was sitting across the room counting on
fingers all the number of radios She said I'm
gonna have a great time shopping 7100 the 7100
has the dr. Mode just like the 5151. So for DSTAR
activity on VHF, UHF, and actually you can do
DSTAR on HF. If you'll go to dstarinfo .com,
you can find some information. There are some
nets on that as well. The 7100 is a great kind
of all -band radio that you can also do D -Star.
So it does incorporate the new features. You
can import and export memories as well on it
with an SD card. It has a full -size SD card,
not the micro size. So a lot of the same features
translate to the 7100. Good radio and very economically
priced for an all -band radio. And a pretty good
-looking radio, too. It is. It is. It is. 812
Net Ham 1. This is your last chance. We just
have a couple of minutes remaining. 812 Net Ham
1. Give us a phone call or Skype us at HamTalk
Live or send us a tweet at HamTalk Live. And
again, thanks to KB2YSI Don Rhodes for uh...
checking in with us tonight and uh... and asking
questions so uh... we've got time for one more
if we can uh... if we can pick one up uh... you
know there was one thing if you if you know i'm
yeah yeah you want to mention something that's
right yeah we've uh... we've done a class at
dayton uh... for the last five years on friday
morning is a three -hour class going through
everything from the basics of D -STAR all the
way to some of the new devices like dongles and
DVAPs and hotspots and everything else. But those
programs can be streamed. If you'll go to the
www .dstarinfo .com website and look under the
conferences tab, you can access those programs.
You can also find those on YouTube as well. If
you're new to D -STAR and need some information,
we'll go into a lot more detail than we've been
able to do tonight about setting up either one
of the earlier generation radios like the 2820,
the 880 radios like that as well as the new generation
3151, 5100, 7100 that incorporates the DR mode.
So you can find that at DSTARinfo .com and an
awful lot of other information is available to
you there. Very good, and we've got another one
from John Ayers here says I was wondering how
to use the gateway to get directly to repeaters
on the 5100 That I think what you're asking on
that is how do There's a Linux PC that's actually
attached to repeaters. It's called the Gateway,
and that allows that repeater to connect via
the Internet to reflectors, which are like big
conference bridges or to other repeaters. Now,
if you're depending on the radio you have, if
you have one of the 51s or 5100s, that's all
handled kind of magically for you in DR mode
that when you select the two. and from that will
allow you to connect through that gateway out
to other repeaters or reflectors. What you do
is in the from heading you will set your local
repeater. In the 2 setting, normally again you
have the use reflector or use repeater CQ, CQ,
CQ, but you can change what's in the 2 field
and that will allow you to connect to reflectors.
For example, reflector 1 Charlie is a very popular
one. Reflector 30 Charlie is a very popular one.
There is a list of reflectors out on DSTARinfo
.com, so some of them are regional. Some of them
have a certain language worldwide. There are
others that are certain interest groups and some
are more geared toward MCOM or ARIES type things
as well. But you change where you want your local
repeater, your radio to go through that local
repeater by changing what's in the to field.
And once you highlight that, rotate the knob
and you'll see access to different reflectors
around. All right, very good. Well, we are out
of time and we just had a call come in, so I'm
sorry we didn't get to you tonight. But John,
I want to thank you for coming on. But that is
a wrap for this week's edition of HamTalk Live.
Thanks to John Davis, WB4QDX, and he's available
at WB4QDX at arrl .net. And thanks to everybody
out there in cyberspace for listening and calling
in and tweeting in. And I'll invite you all back
next Thursday night at 9pm. 7 -3 and good luck
from HamTalk Live.