Today I was checking out the New York City's metropolitan area repeater frequencies when I noticed that a few D-STAR repeaters are already active. Since I never really spent a single minute to find out what this new mode was all about I decided it was time to learn something new and eventually buy a new D-STAR radio. According to Wikipedia, D-STAR is "a digital voice and data protocol specification developed as the result of research by the Japan Amateur Radio League 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 standards to be widely deployed and sold by a major radio manufacturer that is designed specifically for amateur service use" It looked interesting already but when I found that Miles Mann WF1F is proposing the adoption of the D-STAR based ICOM ID800 onboard the ISS I was almost convinced that it was time for me to buy one of these. Unfortunately, my enthusiasm cooled down when I read about some of the criticism that is raising around it.

Is any of you around New York City?
I'd like to start a circle of friends interested about the ISS.
Please let me know so we can meet on one of the local repeaters.

73's
Alain WW3WW
alain@alain.it