Someone at the meeting asked about D-STAR. We should probably have a presentation about this, but in the mean time, here are a few tidbits.
Digital Smart Technologies for Amateur Radio is a protocol developed by the Japanese version of the ARRL. Sadly, only Icom has chosen to incorporate it into their radios. Yaesu and Alinco both have digital radios, but neither are D-STAR nor are they compatible with each other (AFAIK).
D-STAR uses a proprietary chip to encode an operator's voice so that it fits into a very narrow-bandwidth data stream. Data can also be carried along with the voice, though at only 1,200 bits/second (the Ethernet in the Weather Center runs at 1,000,000,000 bits/second with 10x that on the backbone). *However*, that's actually plenty of bandwidth for text and there are applications that will let you send email over D-STAR. This is helpful in emergency situations where internet is not available. 128,000 bits/second are available on the 1.2-GHz band.
There are D-STAR repeaters and we have one thanks to K5MEM. What's neat about the repeater is that in addition to functioning like a regular FM repeater (listen to the input, retransmit on the output), the repeater is also connected to an internet gateway. To use that, you need to register yourself (using your callsign) at https://w5tc.nwc.ou.edu/ (click on "Registration").
The club also has a pair of Icom ID-31A handitalkies and a DVDongle, a device that you connect to your computer that allows you to connect to our gateway from "the other side" and communicate with folks on the air.
Lots of good stuff on the web so I won't bore you all.
http://www.dstarusers.org/
http://www.dstarinfo.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-STAR
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Peter Laws / N5UWY
National Weather Center / Network Operations Center
University of Oklahoma Information Technology
[log in to unmask] (Remote)
College of Architecture, Regional and City Planning, MRCP '16