[aprssig] APRS and dstar (why)

[Brian Clark]

I disagree with you on the Yaesu radio. When I went through the booth, you couldn't get near it. How is that a "flop?" You also state the Icoms were sold out on Saturday. Great, but how many did they have to begin with? 10? 100? 1000?  There is no frame of reference there. I'll wait for the Yeasu to be released to the public to make a call on it. 

You live in a metro area where digital makes sense. As another post pointed out, it's a whole different world in rural areas. My county considered digital. Currently they have one primary repeater. To go digital would have required at least four. An expensive proposition for a county of 13000.

Brian Clark, AG4BC


On May 27, 2012, at 2:29 PM, Amateur Radio WB8NUT <duffy at wb8nut.com> wrote:

> People really consider around $350 bucks for a DStar radio to be such a wall to impede their adoption of digital? I am amazed. Icom ID-31s sold out by early Saturday at Dayton this year. It has GPS built-in, no programming required and every time I transmit, my position goes to the APRS network. No more, radio, GPS and tracker module with wires everywhere.
> 
> I guess when compared to the Chinese radios it is a lot of money. But compared to my D710 at $500, it's a great value.
> 
> From personal observation of the Yaesu booth at Dayton. No crowd around their new digital radio. No excitement. If anything, it was such a flop, a number of people on the fence with digital started snapping up DStar radios. Some models were sold out and others in tight supply there.
> 
> Not that I have abandoned APRS, but the ID-31 sure made it easy to have FM, Digital, world-wide programming, and APRS (DPRS) all in one package.
> 
> I like DStar and like the way it is integrated with APRS. It's been a lot of fun with both