In 2010 when my interest in the hobby renewed, I knew that I needed some sort of 2m rig to get on local repeaters and see what was going on. Shopping around, I found it hard to ignore the generic Chinese dual band radios like the Baofeng, TYT and Wouxon.

I ordered a TYT TH-UVF1 from Universal Radio. Though the price has come down greatly since then, $130 was a good price then. Configuring the channel memories on these units is generally doable but not much fun from the keypad. Much much better to use software and an interface cable.

Also around that time, I picked up a Kenwood TM-731A, a dual band mobile. To be honest, I keep forgetting I have this thing. I need to put it permanently in my truck. Back then, I used it’s cross-band repeater feature. This allowed me to set the HT up on a 70cm simplex channel and set the TM-731 up to repeat, set to a local 2m repeater. Then I could use low power on the handheld to hit the 50 watt mobile and get the repeater reliably. There is a caveat in this operation wherein the 70cm transmission from the mobile back to the HT is technically not a properly identified transmission. In practical terms, I suppose that with it being simplex and with me being just 100 feet or less away, it might be splitting hairs as to whether it was absolutely unidentified. Handy feature anyway, at least for certain specific circumstances.

Over time, we moved and somewhere in there I misplaced the charger for the TYT, so when I felt the need to get back into 2m and 70cm for spring weather watching, I just ordered a Baofeng UV-5R from Amazon and they had dropped to $40. From home out in the country, it was pretty hard to hit any useful repeaters, but at least I could hear Skywarn activities.

The Baofeng, et al, are all capable radios and nobody can touch the price, but I decided this spring that I wanted an HT with more ham friendly features, so I started shopping. Once a little more feature creep entered into the decision, I ended up ordering an Icom ID-51, a dual band radio with DStar.

In my limited experience, there are basically two interesecting groups of DStar detractors. One group seems to assume (incorrectly) that an internet gateway is required to use the radio, which is not true. Operation is the same as analog repeater or analog simplex. A DStar repeater can, however, use an internet gateway to connect to a distant repeater and allow users on both repeaters to converse.

The other group, and I am somewhat in this camp, dislikes that there is a closed source proprietary codec in use in an otherwise extremely open-source anti-proprietary community.

Then again, I bought an ID-51.

As it turns out, there are a half dozen DStar repeaters within range of home, including blowtorch of a repeater with a 60 mile coverage footprint, but there is not much traffic on them. When there is, it is almost always because a repeater gets linked to a reflector and the traffic is from the reflector, not local.

To get my mobile signal out a little better, I added a Mirage dual band amplifier. Most repeaters I have much interest in hitting, I can hit, DStar or analog.

Another whole pursuit with DStar is the Digital Voice Access Point model. There are some low power DStar capable radios that have no audio circuitry at all, essentially designed to build an internet gateway. A very popular way to connect such a DVAP to the internet is the ubiquitous Raspberry Pi computer. I have mine almost working, but I need to dedicate some time to troubleshooting the finer points of configuration.

I mentioned RemoteRig in a previous post. Since my IC-706mkIIg works 2m and 70cm as well, I thought it wise to set it up with a nice base antenna and complete the last piece of the remote working puzzle. I got a Diamond X-300A, a dual band antenna with 6.5dB and 9dB gain on 2m and 70cm, respectively. The high gain will give the radio an effective radiated power of 136 and 55 watts, respectively. I have mounting brackets and a mast to get the antenna up a few feet above the peak of the roof on the workshop, which should get a signal out there.