May 2009 Letter from the Prez

There is a lot going on in Ham Radio and SARA right now (several walk/bike-a-thons, Wild Adventure Race, Stillwater Marathon Race, Hamfests, Balloon team second launch of WØJH-11, the Minnesota Repeater Council meeting and more going). All of them are in the month of May and many are on May 9th, including our club meeting and the fishing opener. FYI -- Don’t forget Mother’s Day on May 10th. Trying to keep track of it all is making my head spin.

The big news is the WØJH repeater. There has been a lot of talk, rumors, questions, and speculation. Work is progressing and soon after this letter is published, the new WØJH repeater should be on the air. Keep looking to the website in the repeater section for updates and progress reports. We hope to post some pictures of the whole endeavor.

We purchased a NEW Icom IC-FR5000 repeater. It is marketed towards the Government, Military, Utilities, and Business sector. It is a commercial repeater that is highly expandable and meets military specifications. I won’t go into the specification and all of its capabilities here but you can go to the Icom America website and get that information straight from Icom. One great feature is that another VHF or UHF module can be installed in the same case and connected to provide cross band or repeater linking functions very easily.

This repeater is analog and digital. Did you notice I said “and”? It does both and it will do it simultaneously. Some say this is the second phase of D-Star, Icom’s digital amateur radio but only time will tell. This repeater is capable of a brand new digital format known as NXDN-FDMA that was co-designed by Kenwood & Icom. It is designed for those that want to meet the up-coming FCC mandate for 6.25 KHz channel spacing, but that can't (or don't) want to move to the APCO P25 Phase-II equipment. For those non-technical types, it is similar to Icom’s D-Star. Both Icom and Kenwood are selling radios for the commercial market for NXDN-FDMA. It’s known as Icom IDAS (Icom Digital Advanced System) and Kenwood calls it NEXEDGE. The radios are capable of narrowband analog, along with 12.5 KHz & 6.25 KHz digital emissions.

D-Star was developed by ICOM and is the forerunner to this technology known as IDAS. IDAS, also known as FDMA is the system that meets all the FCC technical standards through 2018 and is backwards compatible with 25 kHz, 12.5 kHz analog systems plus capable of operating in the digital mode on 25, 12.5, and 6.25 kHz channel spacing. Unlike D-Star, the NXDN repeaters can repeat analog and digital so you can have a smooth user migration. NXDN supports unit ID auto-roaming and registration much like D-Star. If the FCC allows us to use this technology, it will put ham radio operators into state-of-the-art communications for the first time in about 10 years. Either way, SARA will be ready and will raise the bar for repeaters in the Twin Cities that can do both analog and digital simultaneously.

The price to get started with NXDN will be about half the cost of D-STAR. What’s nice, unlike D-Star, more than one manufacturer is making radios and it costs less. An ID-RP2C Repeater Controller for D-Star runs about $1500. You need to add a band specific RF voice module such as the ID-RP2000V for 2 meters which is another $1400. Where as the Icom IC-FR5000 Series VHF and UHF Repeaters run about $1500. This NXDN route also provides the analog/digital mixed mode backwards compatibility that D-Star doesn't. The user end radios between D-Star and NXDN appear to be very similar in price.

I hope I didn’t get too technical for most of you. I know it did for my wife who helps me proof these. I want to thank you for your support. Whenever I am faced with a question for the club, I ask myself, “Is this decision best for SARA now and in the future?” The best way for me to know that answer with the repeater is for SARA, i.e. – YOU, to use and support it. When this repeater goes on the air, please use it, a lot. Thanks and 73.

Rick Brennan
KØBR
SARA President