The Zed can be full of all kinds of stuff – people bitching about CW, no code techs, etc. But you can catch breaking news over there from time to time as well.
The USPS is discontinuing the sale of IRC’s officially. Personally, they have been a pain to find for many years anyway. Discussion is at this link.
The second thing is that it seems Icom is trying to breathe life into their suite of DSTAR equipped rigs (yawn) and offer the ability to operate DSTAR on HF, 10 and 6. That stuff can be found at this link.
Would love to see comments from you on your thoughts on both.
I think I’ve only used IRC’s once, back in my early Novice days. Granted, I don’t exchange a lot of paper QSL’s. But since most people have access to QSL bureaus, and with the availability of online services like eQSL and LoTW, there seems to be little need for them anymore. Aside from the amateur radio community, I’m not sure who else purchased them.
As for D-Star, I can’t see this really working out. 10FM and 6FM, maybe a little. HF, not likely. It’s clearly going to be a niche market (even more niche than D-Star already is). I used D-Star for two years, and wasn’t really impressed. The voice quality can be harsh, and the error correction is almost non-existent. At marginal signal strength, the audio stream is too garbled to be usable at all. I just don’t know how they expect such a fragile signal to survive the harsh environment of HF.
I agree on IRCs – we probably were the only people using them. I fear that QSL buro’s will eventually be a thing of the past…And maybe even paper QSLs as a whole.
I think DSTAR on HF (or any band) just isn’t going to last. Icom keeps it afloat, but they can’t do it forever. I do think that one day a digital modulation type may replace SSB on HF. Think about it – it has happened before (migration from AM to SSB, etc).
I thought there was some experimentation with digital HF audio around 14.236 a few years ago. Not sure whatever happened to that project. D-Star has some big clusters around the country (and probably Japan) that help to keep it afloat. With commercial digital modes showing up in the amateur spectrum, and Yaesu still planning some digital mode (probably compatible with nothing else), the market is clearly more diluted than it was when Icom introduced D-Star.
Funny you should mention that stuff, Jason.
I’ve actually played with receiving WinDRM on 14.233 before. This is an example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzrqCJqmk2A
I never got setup to transmit in the mode, but I know guys who have. 14.236 was the freq used by a bunch of the guys using the AOR add on device that would do their specific digital modulation.
Whatever Yaesu is doing is just crazy. Everybody though it would be DMR compatible (aka TRBO). FAIL.