Three New D-Star ID-RP4010V Repeaters Purchased

Icom was having a closeout sale on the newest D-Star repeater modules. We bought three. We were actually saving up for one – they were $1600 retail.  They have two key features for us- one they are controller less (takes up less rack space), and two they support FM. FEMA goes on and on about interoperability. The idea of the technical superiority of any given flavor of radio is all well and good. But in what the FCC calls our role “emergency communication” – the oddball “better” mode of the week is not good. 

The plan is to deploy these new ones in our three downtown/core metro sites. St Paul, Minneapolis and possibly Golden Valley. Those repeaters can then be FM, for events etc. D-Star repeaters – the older ones- have been highly reliable for us us over ten years. Ray from Icom says the repeaters were not selling- I guess people wanted to have controllable personal hotspots or some such. The role of Internet linked repeaters in emergencies is debateable. The idea that random out of town traffic can take up repeater capacity during local emergencies baffles me. 

These will go on IRCDDB- the Icom gateway software is both old and yukky. Inbound Internet port forwarding is an oudated, bad security practice. We have been correctly chewed out over this by major hospitals and universities. We use outbound only tunnels for our sites. This works over any Internet such as public Wi-fi. And we use a Raspberry Pi- no noisy power and space hogging desktop computers. 

Erik, NY9D 12/22/23