grosporina
Member
I'm at a complete loss here, I'm trying to get into DSTAR using the Kenwood TH-D74A and I'm completely stuck. I am registered on the DSTAR network and when I kerchunk on of the local repeaters I show up in the contact log for the repeater, but as often as not I get no response from the repeater.
Half the time the green screen indicating a signal will come up for a split second and I will hear "O P", the other half the time I get absolutely nothing in the way of response. Either way though if I look through the repeater's recent contacts log I see my callsign and the time I pressed PTT. I can also listen to the repeater pretty much fine, able to follow long conversations. I've tried reading through the TH-D74A/E Operating Tips PDF from Kenwood, specifically the section on making a local repeater call, I have no idea what I'm doing wrong or missing.
When I check in the RX history, for the times when I got the mysterious "O P" audio I can find a corresponding RX log entry from the repeater with my callsign as the destination, but there's no message. Every other resource I've looked at on DSTAR online indicates when a connect to a repeater I should get some "URxxx" gobbledygook message back from the receiver.
Does anyone know of an idiot's guide to getting DSTAR set up on the TH-D74 for the most basic local CQ call? I can be standing right next to my friend and his ID-51A and he will PTT for a second and get the expected response from the local DSTAR repeater while I do the same and might get nothing, but he will see on his radio, through the repeater, that I connected. I just don't get what I am missing, obviously it's not an issue with the signal from the repeater reaching me, since I can receive other peoples' conversations just fine , and I see their messages while they are talking (which in most cases is the person's name and location).
There's something fundamental I'm missing here and no amount of rereading the Kenwood tips PDF leads me to any new ideas for what to try and I don't want to be stepping all over other peoples' traffic continuously sending test transmissions.
What I have set up so far is:
set up my callsign in menu 610 (ex:"VA3xxx/D74")
set up a message in menu 611
set the radio to VFO then long-press down on the 4-way switch and selected a local repeater form the repeater list
selected local CQ via long press on the 4-way switch and selection of "local CQ" (CQCQCQ)
switched to DR mode via the digital menu
If I look in the TX history this is an example of what I am sending:
"UR:CQCQCQ
R2:VE3YYZ B
R1 VE3YYZ B
447.700.00
MY:VA3xxx"
I'm pretty sure I set up my DSTAR registration right, at the moment I have one entry consisting of my callsign and a space character per the self registration instructions on dstargateway, and if I check for my callsign in the registry it comes up. Regardless, as I understand it for a local CQ I shouldn't need to be registered in the system anyway.
Even the conversations I've seen on the repeater I can tell are often with the same model transceiver as mine, so I'm sure this thing can do what I'm trying to do, I'm just bashing my head against the wall trying to guess what mystery setting or option I didn't set right.
Half the time the green screen indicating a signal will come up for a split second and I will hear "O P", the other half the time I get absolutely nothing in the way of response. Either way though if I look through the repeater's recent contacts log I see my callsign and the time I pressed PTT. I can also listen to the repeater pretty much fine, able to follow long conversations. I've tried reading through the TH-D74A/E Operating Tips PDF from Kenwood, specifically the section on making a local repeater call, I have no idea what I'm doing wrong or missing.
When I check in the RX history, for the times when I got the mysterious "O P" audio I can find a corresponding RX log entry from the repeater with my callsign as the destination, but there's no message. Every other resource I've looked at on DSTAR online indicates when a connect to a repeater I should get some "URxxx" gobbledygook message back from the receiver.
Does anyone know of an idiot's guide to getting DSTAR set up on the TH-D74 for the most basic local CQ call? I can be standing right next to my friend and his ID-51A and he will PTT for a second and get the expected response from the local DSTAR repeater while I do the same and might get nothing, but he will see on his radio, through the repeater, that I connected. I just don't get what I am missing, obviously it's not an issue with the signal from the repeater reaching me, since I can receive other peoples' conversations just fine , and I see their messages while they are talking (which in most cases is the person's name and location).
There's something fundamental I'm missing here and no amount of rereading the Kenwood tips PDF leads me to any new ideas for what to try and I don't want to be stepping all over other peoples' traffic continuously sending test transmissions.
What I have set up so far is:
set up my callsign in menu 610 (ex:"VA3xxx/D74")
set up a message in menu 611
set the radio to VFO then long-press down on the 4-way switch and selected a local repeater form the repeater list
selected local CQ via long press on the 4-way switch and selection of "local CQ" (CQCQCQ)
switched to DR mode via the digital menu
If I look in the TX history this is an example of what I am sending:
"UR:CQCQCQ
R2:VE3YYZ B
R1 VE3YYZ B
447.700.00
MY:VA3xxx"
I'm pretty sure I set up my DSTAR registration right, at the moment I have one entry consisting of my callsign and a space character per the self registration instructions on dstargateway, and if I check for my callsign in the registry it comes up. Regardless, as I understand it for a local CQ I shouldn't need to be registered in the system anyway.
Even the conversations I've seen on the repeater I can tell are often with the same model transceiver as mine, so I'm sure this thing can do what I'm trying to do, I'm just bashing my head against the wall trying to guess what mystery setting or option I didn't set right.