Dayton Hamvention
Thursday was spent traveling to Dayton, OH so that jmaynard and I could spend the weekend at Dayton Hamvention. The hotel was having connectivity problems, but that would be fixed sometime Friday.
Friday was spent at Hamvention itself. I summed up the day with "I carried a radio in. I carried a radio out." But not the same radio. Jay had a UHF repeater to sell, and that's what I carried in. Later he bought me a birthday present: an Icom 2820 and D-star module. That's what's I carried out. We picked up a few other things as well.
I've met, or at least encountered, a few of the bigger names in D-star now. As well as a few of the folks whose names I recognized due to frequency coordination. The official reason we are here is that Jay is on the Nation Frequency Coordination Council. And they had a meeting here that had to be at, since he was running the thing.
Of course, we've both been curious about the Dayton Hamvention and and now we're actually here. Oh, yeah, I also met, though I did not recognize him at the time, the real Bruce Perens (accept no substitutes).
Friday evening was a D-star meeting or forum that lasted a few hours but didn't seem very long. There were two big things. One is that this is very early in D-star, at least in the US, and growth seems to be going exponential. One person claimed that this is the current "disruptive technology" in amateur radio and going from FM to routable digital voice (and data) might be the biggest thing since the move from AM to single sideband. The other is that folks are working open source software, and hardware, for D-star, and again it's very early. Right now a lot is just figuring out how the current generation of radios work and what they and the protocol can do. There are some things that folks would like to do that can't be done with the currently manufactured radios as-is... but already there are ways to change a few things and remove some of the limitations. There was also a drawing for a door prize: an Icom 2820 and D-star module. Neither Jay not I won it. The person who did lives in an area without a D-star system, yet. The radio is certainly still useful, being a very complete VHF-UHF dual bander.
So far the weather has been sunny. Sunny to the point we've both got some sunburn. We will be getting some sunscreen to keep things from getting worse. I mention this as I've heard "It's not Dayton if it doesn't rain." The current forecast says that the next rains here will be Sunday afternoon, after the Hamvention ends. Of course, that is a weather forecast.