D-Star setup for dummies, Part 4

This will be a fairly short post, but it will contain some of the more important D-Star commands available to you. These are some of those shortcuts that I was talking about when we were programming the radio with the icf file that we downloaded and programed our radio with in Part 2

Let me start with a term that you will often hear, "Quick key"
All this is is just like it sounds, just keying your radio for a second or less. This serves a few purposes:
1. Sends whatever command you are sending to the repeater.
2. It also lets other people know that you are there.
3. If the is a conversation going on and you would like to "break in", instead of waiting for a long enough gap for you to key up and say "Break gentlemen please" you just need to wait until the QSO is being handed over to the other person and in that sometimes all too short interval you can just Quick key and they will see you appear on their screen and "should" let you in.


Firstly some of those commands like "U", "L", "I" and "E".

First lets start with "E"

"E" stands for "Echo" and is a very important but sadly underused command. What "E" does is allow you to transmit to the repeater and when you de-key the repeater will play back whatever you said exactly as the repeater heard you.
This is very important for several reasons.
1. You can tell how well you are making it into the repeater particularly if the repeater is on the edge of your coverage. You can often tell if the repeater is just too far out of range or if you need to turn up your power a little to access it properly.
2. You will be able to hear exactly how you will sound to other people on the network.
3. Are you too quiet.
4. Are you too loud.
5. Are you overdriving your audio.
6. Is your audio garbled (R2-D2)
etc. etc.

So you can see why I started with this command and why you should make use of it.

I will show you how to access these commands at the end of this section as there is no point in me repeating almost the same information over and over as they are all within the same section of the menu.

Now lets continue with "I"

"I" stand for Information (yes quite obvious really) sometimes referred to as Repeater Status.

What this will do is when you Quick key the repeater will both by voice and via a message on your screen give you information about that repeater such as it's website. This website can be very useful in that all repeaters should have one that will give you a quick overview of it's current status including:
1. It's modules.
2. Reflectors it is connected to (if any).
3. Stations heard, when and their status message.

An example of my local repeater is given here (unfortunately I picked a very quiet time to take this screenshot)

Here we can see that Module C (I will talk about modules later) is linked to reflector REF001C.
The last few callsigns that were heard by the repeater.
The user messages that those callsigns transmitted.
Which module they were last heard on.
The date and time that they were last heard.

And lastly at the bottom when this information was last updated. This information is usually updated every 10-30 seconds depending on the repeater keepers setup.

Now let's continue with "U"

"U" stands for unlink, so if I am talking to the repeater on module C and send a "U" command then the repeater will unlink from any reflector it is connected to on that module.

A polite word about unlinking and linking.
It is considered polite to announce your intention to unlink a module BEFORE you do it. Someone may be listening on that reflector or waiting for a scheduled contact with someone who will be coming through that reflector. So please if you intend to unlink a reflector, announce your intention to do so and wait for a minimum of 30 seconds so as anyone can reply before you actually unlink the reflector.

It is also worth checking with your local repeater keeper whether they mind you leaving the reflector linked or if they would prefer you to unlink when you have finished using it. I have to say this here that my local repeater keeper is very good on this subject and is happy for you to leave the reflector linked as long as you like (Thank you Tony G0MBA). Having said that, the software running on the repeater will usually be running a timer that will disconnect the reflector after a period of time if it is unused, however a Quick key will restart that timer again if you do it before it has timed out. Some other repeaters will by default connect to a specific reflector after a period of inactivity (usually reflector REF001C from what I have seen).

Now we get to "L"

"L" is probably the most misunderstood yet most powerful of commands you can send to the repeater.

"L" as you might have already guessed is for linking a module on the repeater to a reflector. However unlike the previous commands it cannot be sent on it's own, you must tell the repeater where you want that module to connect to. What you will be wanting to connect to is a reflector, so the command would look something like this:
REF001 CL
What this is telling the repeater is that you want to connect to REFlector 001 module C and L is the link command.
Now all you need to do is a Quick Key and the repeater will respond with a voice message and screen message telling you whether you have been successful or not.

Now this may seem confusing at first but it really isn't especially if you have programmed your radio using the resource that I showed you previously as all of these are programmed into your radios memories and are only a couple of presses away.

Here is a quick example using screenshots on my radio.

In this example we will connect the repeater module C to REF001C

1. Click/press Use Repeater

This will bring up this menu

Now this may seem counter intuitive (well it does to me) but click/press on "Your Call Sign"
This will bring up a menu with all of the programmed reflectors and a few shortcuts at the start.
Scroll down to to this entry.

Now press/click on the entry that I have highlighted.
This will bring you back to this screen.

Now all you have to do is Quick Key and the repeater will respond with a message which in essence will tell you if you were successful or not.

If you were succesful you now need to change the "TO" field back to "Use Repeater" which is done in the same way as selecting the reflector except you select the first option "Use Repeater" with "CQCQCQ" just below it as seen here.

Click/press on the highlighted option and you will be taken back to the main screen and are ready to talk via your repeater and through the reflector to any other repeater connected to that reflector as seen below.

I am going to save talking about modules and reflectors until the next post as this one has got long enough without adding that information as well and it is probably best that it has it's own section anyway.


As always I would appreciate any comments you do have.

All The Best 73's
Until next time

Paul
M0CNL