Beginner's Guide to D Star

D star Historically, digital voice and data protocol specification developed to investigate digital technologies for amateur radio. While there are other digital on-air technologies being used by amateurs that have come from other services, D-STAR is one of the first on-air and packet-based standards to be widely deployed and sold by a major radio manufacturer that is designed specifically for amateur service use.

D star compatible radios are available on VHF, UHF, and microwave amateur radio bands. The radios are also capable of being connected to the Internet or other networks and provisions for routing data streams of voice or packet data via amateur radio call-signs.

The first manufacturer to offer D-STAR compatible radios is Icom America The link for Icom can be found ... here

D-STAR transfers both voice and data via digital encoding over the 2 m (VHF), 70 cm (UHF), and 23 cm (1.2 GHz) amateur radio bands. There is also a format to link systems on a local area using 10GHz, which serves as a backup for emergency personnel to use for linking and communications in the event Internet access is unavailable.

In addition to the DV or Digital Voice channels, a strictly Digital Data channel is available on the 23 cm band. Interfacing with computer equipment can be done via a RS-232 or parallel cable, or USB cable for low data transfers, and standard Ethernet (RJ-45) for faster data transfers.

Getting Started with D-Star for the first time?

1. Read this Wikipedia on D-Star for and understanding of how it came about.


2. Print and keep this D-Star for Newbies by Susan Mackay VK3ANZ, it is an excellent reference.
   
   Also check out Gary Pearce's "Repeaters from A-D: A D-Star Primer" Gary publishes ARVN: Amateur Radio/Video News


3. Decide what D-Star radio works best for you by viewing either The ICOM Mobile Radio Comparison or The ICOM Portable Comparison ICOM is the only act in town in D-Star as of now.


4. Choose a gateway (repeater system) and register. Remember this is a two part process. Instructions can be found here


5. Time to program the radio. Viewthese two excellent videos on programming by: KN4AQ of Amateur Radio/Video News


6. Last step is to enjoy! But make sure you review these Usage guidelines first

And more info

Today's D star radios are operated linking separate "repeaters" together via TCP/IP protocols for callsign routing of traffic. Operators typically associate to each other via a trusted relationship through the repeater system. The current master system gateway is operated by K5TIT group in Texas which was the first organization to install a D star repeater system in the United States.

Currently, gateway control software is referred to as "Gateway 2.0", which runs on virtually any distro of Linux, but the ICOM recommended and supported edition of Linux is....

1. Cent O.S. v5.1
2. minimum Pentium 4 2.4 Ghz capable machine or faster
3. 512 Mb of memory
4. two NIC's (network interface cards)
5. 10GB of free space to include the O.S install

for more information on the supported Linux based Cent O.S. Centos.org

Each amateur station using repeaters or gateways must register their particular gateway as their home system. This allows for lookups across the entire lookup domain for easy identification of stations. Each amateur station will be allowed eight internal IP addresses for use with their callsigns or radios.

The network gateway must be sitting behind a NAT capable router for the internal private IP addresses to be translated to one single IP. The second Network Interface Card or NIC will be connected directly to the D star repeater via Ethernet

source: D-STAR From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Another useful guide to getting started with D star is this PDF written by Gary Pearce, KN4AQ and can be found here...

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