Icom pay you back?

[cifn2]

From January 9, 2012 to February 9, 2012, qualifying clubs are required to place a US$3,000* deposit on a 70cm D-STAR repeater with Icom America Inc. (*plus freight and applicable taxes)

Icom America Sponsorship - World Radiosport Team Championship 2014

Icom is offering to refund your deposit of $3000 if...

Install in permanent location identified at the time of purchase
Fully operational on the USROOT trust server with Icom G2 Gateway Software and within the requirements outlined by the USROOT Administration team
Minimum of 10 users registered on the "Gateway"
Guarantee system on air for minimum of 1 year from date of installation

This program is limited to clubs located in priority areas listed below or not within an existing D-STAR Repeater (100 Aeronautical Mile Radius). Send a club biography and an outline of how D-STAR will be used in your community to DSTAR.Promo@icomamerica.com to see if your club qualifies.
Priority areas:
Washington (Eastern)
Idaho
Montana
Wyoming
New Mexico

Western Texas
Nevada (North)
North Dakota
South Dakota
Minnesota (Northern)

Kentucky
Illinois (Southern)
Nebraska
Kansas


Limitations
This promotion is for U.S. residents only. Applicants cannot be affiliated with employees of Icom, Inc., including any parent, subsidiary or entity affiliated with Icom, Inc.or the distribution channels of Icom products.
For more information about the D-STAR promotion, please email DSTAR.Promo@icomamerica.com

 

[W2NJS]

Sounds like Icom is getting desperate.

 

[cifn2]

I think more people are looking at the Commercial Nexedge type products instead of DSTAR.

 

[VK5ZEA]

Sounds like Icom is getting desperate.

With the increase of hams building their own D-Star repeaters, some with nothing more than a couple of narrowband radios and a PC with a sound card (and the required RF hardware, duplexer, antenna, cables, etc.)... Icom need to do something to make their repeater hardware more affordable.

 

[kayn1n32008]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9780; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.8+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0.0.600 Mobile Safari/534.8+)

Sounds like Icom is getting desperate.

With the increase of hams building their own D-Star repeaters, some with nothing more than a couple of narrowband radios and a PC with a sound card (and the required RF hardware, duplexer, antenna, cables, etc.)... Icom need to do something to make their repeater hardware more affordable.

Not suprising after hearing of poor materials/workmanship of the Icom equipment.

 

[VK5ZEA]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9780; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.8+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0.0.600 Mobile Safari/534.8+)

Not suprising after hearing of poor materials/workmanship of the Icom equipment.

Agreed. I was most disappointed with my ID-RP4000V D-Star repeaters selectivity. Nothing wrong with the sensitivity, but in the presence of other UHF signals and even low level broadband noise from the D-Star transmitter... the receiver really struggled.

Receiver test at the VK5REX D-Star repeater - YouTube

I'm more than happy with it's performance now... but I wish I had been better informed as to how much extra RF hardware I needed to get. It also would have been nice if the Icom gear had more inbuilt/remote diagnostics or even some indication on the front panel.

New VK5REX duplexer arrangement - YouTube

This is why my 2m D-Star repeater doesn't use Icom RF hardware... I designed an interface to make a GMSK DV Node Adapter "talk" directly to the Icom controller. You can see the 2m D-Star repeater in the background at the start of the 2nd video... just above my right shoulder.

Michael.
VK5ZEA