On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 08:34:29PM -0800, Donald Jacob wrote:
Gordon, If you use that logic, then why use amateur radio at all. Just use your cell phone and you can talk to anyone, anywhere (that will answer!).
Hobby, learn, have fun, meet others with the same interests etc.... Guess something got lost along the way!
Most of the time if I just want to talk to somebody, that's what I'd do. In an emergency I'd rely on my mobile phone rather than someone's lash-up of consumer-grade networking equipment and dangly wires hooked up to the latest and greatest digital toy.
Okay, sell it to me. What do you learn from DStar? What's so fun about it? As far as I can see, it's a sealed box with no real opportunity to experiment. Being taken to court for building your own doesn't sound like a lot of fun to me, although I guess you'd learn a lot about patent law.