DSTAR - D what?

Well,

Not being one for newfangled technollogy, I've done no experiments whatsoever with the DSTAR capability in my IC-7100..... until now....

I wondered if I could hear the not so far away repeater GB3IN in Matlock, Derbyshire. It's a DSTAR note. I listened on an analogue radio and found regular bursts of what sounded very much like data.

This is GB3IN:

http://www.gb3in.co.uk/

I started by reading the IC-7100 manual, that didn't help much at all, then I found this video on You-Tube which is most excellent:


Good job Julien, N3FJ!

I was also sent an idiots guide which I have made available on the interweb here:

Idiots Guide

These two resources explained a whole pile of stuff to me. Here's the radio configuration for local CQ through GB3IN:


And this repeater configuration includes the Gateway callsign information for making Gateway CQ calls.



I'm still very much new to this and haven't figured all things out yet, but the pieces are slowly falling into place.

One of the accessories available for the IC-7100 is an external GPS - there is a 2.5mm jack socket on the back for connecting the receiver.

Now, a while back I did some fiddling with GPS receivers when I made the GPS disciplined frequency reference for the shack:

http://g0mgx.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/gps-disciplined-really.html

So I am thinking it should be easy to connect one of the GPS receivers I have here to the IC-7100. This is how I think it should work and what the actually thing looks like in reality:


I'll connect it all together tomorrow and report back on what happens.

Dogs looking confused; my mum thinks he is almost asking if he should wake up the cat?


Fun egh?