As mentioned in our newsletter, I have been in correspondence with both the RSGB Emerging Technology Coordination Committee (I did prefer the old name Repeater Management Committee) and Ofcom, regarding our D-Star Application. It appears we are at stalemate with the Primary User with regards to our application for a new Frequency Pair on 70cms.

As the time for us to complete our Lottery Funded project is rapidly running out, I have enquired if our existing NoV for GB3HU can be made “dual mode”. This means we can swap out our existing FM repeater and put the D-Star in its place on the same site and retain the option of reverting it back to FM when our Application finally goes ahead.

Once we have an NoV in our hands we can finally place our order with Icom for a D-Star Repeater. However, there are still some technical issues to resolve: Firstly the UHF D-Star Repeaters are designed to operate with a 9MHz split and single antenna, we can use the filters from GB3HU but this is an unknown quantity. Secondly, our site at Weedley does not have an Internet connection and I am currently investigating the use of a 3G mobile router provided by Clive G3GJA.