Last night was the RST meeting, and we set a new record for the largest attendance ever with 56 people squeezed in to the room at Cox Media. The topic was D-Star, and it was an excellent presentation.
After the presentation, the club made the commitment to set up a new D-Star system in Tucson. The excitement level has been high and as of this afternoon it looks like enough funds have been raised to go for a "Full Stack" - which means that we should be seeing 2 meters, 70 cm, and 23 cm repeaters in service before too long.
A couple of guys in the club already have Icom 2820H rigs, here is one of them set up on the table for a demo, with a 1.2 gHz repeater module in the background. The audio is certainly cleaner but the real power of D-Star seems to be in the networking capabilities. It will be interesting to watch as the D-Star system evolves.
That's what makes ham radio so fun, there is always something new to play with!
