D-Star and the Icom IC-80AD

“I’d send it back if I were you” — was probably the best advice I received this past weekend, after voicing my frustration over setting up the Icom IC-80AD handheld to access my local D-Star repeaters.  (The manual is poorly written, the rig’s keyboard interface is poorly designed and organized, and the software, although highly visual, simply doesn’t work right and has NO documentation.)

D-Star Digital Voice mode is different in many ways from the old FM days.  First of all you either hear the other station or you don’t (you might get a brief digital burp if things aren’t working well).  But some of the exchange information is dealt with digitally.  There is some basic stuff that needs to be setup — pretty logical and simple.  The critical things are:

• MYCALL — this is set to your amateur call.  In my case “WB4SON”
• RPT1 — this is the call sign of the repeater being used plus a channel indicator (the channel indicator MUST be in the 8th position, and is “C” for 2 meters: so in my case it is “W1AAD  C”  with 2 spaces between the “D” and “C”)
• RPT2 — this the the gateway to the internet, generally the same call as RPT1 with a “G” (so in my case it is “W1AAD  G” with 2 spaces between the “D” and “G”)
• URCALL — this is set to “CQCQCQ” unless you are calling a specific station (not just working a random station through a repeater)

Simple enough, right?  Well simple except the Icom software I was using to make programming “easier” prevented me from entering anything into the RPT2 field — that wasn’t critical enough to prevent me from contacting local users of the repeater but it would prevent my digital signals from making it onto the internet and remote users.

The solution was to setup the radio using the Icom software, download it to the IC-80AD, then use the keyboard to enter the correct RPT2 values.  Finally the rig settings were transferred back to the computer and saved.  And in the process of doing all of this I discovered that putting the radio into the DR mode, even accidentally, really messes things up (even though this button seems to be exactly what you want to press — don’t.)

But tenacity payed off, and this one time setup (for the most part) is complete.  I now have fully functional memory channel programming with the proper settings for D-Star DV.  Now I can enjoy the radio rather than fight with it.

Icom IC-80AD