D-Star lift off!

OK, I just tested my set up into VA7ICM using the trick of setting the local gateway for RPT2 routing, but with the CQCQCQ UR Call. Everything works hunky-dory... at least I get back the error message from VA7ICM saying it can't find the call CQCQCQ.

So it looks like I'm in business, and more to the point that my handiwork in getting the yagi up and pointing in the general direction, with the feed line in good shape, is all OK.

I've tried both 10W and 1W (low power), and seem to have no problem being heard/understood by the repeater, at least for this minimal handshake. It would be cool if you could get the gateway to respond with a signal/quality metric, perhaps displaying this with your call sign in the available online logs (last heard lists), that way I could ascertain whether 1W is genuinely sufficient for reliable communication with the repeater, or whether it is borderline.

.....

I've just tried VE7RAG, which is well off-axis of my beam, and still managed to wake up this repeater too on 1W! So, I'm a pretty happy bunny. When I get time I might see if I can wake up VE7VIC too. I very much doubt I can make it into that repeater as it lies some 61.33 statute miles to the SSW. This is well beyond the stated 20mi range claimed on the repeater. I don't know how this is computed, but it's noticeably less than the 40mi claimed for both VE7RAG and VA7ICM.