ORANGE COUNTY RADIO AMATEURS
Orange County, North Carolina
D-STAR Special Interest Group

What is ?

OCRA members known to be D-STAR capable:

D-STAR Hardware (ICOM Radios):

At the present time, only ICOM is manufacturing D-STAR radio equipment.  Kenwood markets (in Japan only) a Kenwood-branded D-STAR radio, but it is actually built by ICOM.  These ICOM radios are either D-STAR upgradeable with the addition of the appropriate D-STAR Module, or D-STAR ready:

D-STAR Hardware (DV Dongle):

Besides radios, the D-STAR network can be accessed directly through a computer by using a device called the DV Dongle, which works through a USB port on either a PC or a Mac.

D-STAR repeaters currently operating or soon to be operating in North Carolina:

Tentative simplex frequencies for D-STAR in North Carolina: 145.600MHz (caution: may interfere with packet operations) 145.670MHz (caution: may interfere with packet operations) 441.0000MHz (national digital simplex calling frequency) 441.5000MHz

Programming your D-STAR Radio:

Note: You would do well to purchase the programming software and cabling to allow you to use a PC for radio setup.  Several of these D-STAR radios use hard to read segmented displays and require you to jump through many button pressings and can therefore be tedious to do manually.

There are four parameters in which you'll need to enter the information that will enable your D-STAR radio to operate:

1. MYCALL --This stores your own callsign, which is sent whenever you transmit in D-STAR mode.
2. URCALL --This stores the callsign of the station with which you wish to communicate.
3. RPT1 --This stores the callsign of your local D-STAR repeater.
4. RPT2 --Some D-STAR repeaters have "gateway" connectivity, which allow you to transmit and receive through a distant gateway equipped D-STAR repeater.  RPT2 holds the callsign of the distant D-STAR gateway repeater, if used.

   
   

• D-STAR radios have provisions to store multiple MYCALLs, enabling your D-STAR radio to be set up to be operated by other operaters in your multi-ham family, or to store club or contest callsigns if appropriate.

• On the V82/U82, the MYCALL parameter is a field named "MYC" and is eight characters in length.  The U81/U82 has provisions for six MYCALL entries, labelled "MYC.1" through "MYC.6" and you can select which MYCALL entry you wish to make active.

• Your D-STAR radio will have the provision of displaying at power-on whichever MYCALL is currently active, which will help you make sure you're not using an incorrect callsign identifier when you operate.  On the U81/U82, this handy feature is named "MYD" and can be enabled ("MYD.ON") or disabled ("MYD.OF").

• Another parameter called CALL SIGN NOTE is a four character field that many people use to transmit the model radio they are using, such as "IC-82" for the ICOM IC-V82 or U82.  On the V82/U82, this field is named "MYS".  There are six such entries, "MYS.1" through "MYS.6", which are associated and transmitted along with "MYC.1" through "MYC.6".

• Because the MYCALL information is sent upon keying your radio, "kerchunking" a D-STAR repeater without voice identification is permitted.  The repeater will know who you are!

More information about URCALL:

• D-STAR has a feature called "callsign squelch" or "DSQL", which is the ability to keep the receiver squelched to stations other than the station whose callsign is programmed into the URCALL field.  In addition to whatever stations you choose to program into your radio, you will also want to program one of your URCALL fields with the data "CQCQCQ" to allow you to transmit a general call or to hear everyone participating in roundtable and net operations.

• You can override callsign squelch on the other person's receiver by enabling either the "Break-In" function ("BRK.ON" to enable and "BRK.OF" to disable on the V82/U82) or the "EMR" function on your D-STAR transmitter ("EMR.ON" to enable and "EMR.OF" to disable on the V82/U82).  Using the EMR function will also automatically raise the audio gain on the distant end's receiver up to Level 12 even if the gain had been set to minimum.  Obviously, either of these functions should be used with discretion.

• On the V82/U82, the URCALL parameter is named "YUC" and has room for eight characters.  The V82/U82 has provisions for six URCALL entries, named "YUC.1" through "YUC.6" and you can select which URCALL entry you wish to make active.

• You'll be well advised to store "CQCQCQ" into YUC.1 since you will be using it a lot!

  
  

• On the V82/U82, the RPT.1 parameter is named "R1C" and has room for eight characters.  The V82/U82 has provisions for six RPT.1 entries, named "R1C.1" through "R1C.6" and you can select which RPT.1 entry you wish to make active.

• Because repeaters with the same callsign may be operating on different bands, an additional letter should be programmed into the eighth position of each "R1.C" entry.  This eighth letter is called the "port letter" or sometimes just "the switch" and follows this convention:
  • "A" for 1.2GHZ (this is the default if no port letter is entered)
  • "B" for 70CM
  • "C" for 2M
  • "E" if you want the repeater to echo your transmission back to you for test purposes
  • "G" if you're using the gateway function on a repeater that is gateway equipped

More information about RPT.2:

• On the V82/U82, the RPT.2 parameter is named "R2C" and has room for eight characters.  The V82/U82 has provisions for six RPT.2 entries, named "R2C.1" through "R2C.6" and you can select which RPT.2 entry you wish to make active.

• Because repeaters with the same callsign may be operating on different bands, an additional letter should be programmed into the eighth position of each "R2.C" entry.  This eighth letter is called the "port letter" or sometimes just "the switch" and follows this convention:
  • "A" for 1.2GHZ (this is the default if no port letter is entered)
  • "B" for 70CM
  • "C" for 2M

• The selection of this port letter is important.  You'll want to make sure that at the distant end your signal is sent on the band you're contact is monitoring.

• The RPT.2 parameter must be enabled.  On the V82/U82, that function is named "RPT2" and can be enabled ("RPT2.ON") or disabled ("RPT2.OF").

Here are several tutorials that show the setup process step-by-step:

• D-STAR Programming Part 1 --YouTube video from KN4AQ
  
• D-STAR Programming Part 2 --YouTube video from KN4AQ

• D-STAR Calculator --defaulted to KB4HG repeater, but user-customizeable