[drats_users] Using D-Rats on a reflector

[James Deuel]

Hello all,
 
I was listening to Dan, KK7DS, on the REF002A reflector at around 11:30 PM EDT. The discussion appeared to be about loss of messages with D-Rats because people would key on the sending signal and corrupt the transmission. I know little about how D-Star functions, but I have a few procedural ideas to avoid the issue for now. 
The first problem is that the short messages (not file sending) can be successfully sent if the originator would key down to announce a message was being sent and hitting send while doing this. It would appear that Evans, KD4EFM, does this well with his canned weather reports. The other way would be to not let the software send the message until the operator is actually keying the radio for a voice transmission (radio not in auto tx?).
Dan mentioned that file transfers with error detection require the software to key the radio when needed. In this case, I don't have an answer, but a question. If the originator, W6XXX, wanted to transfer a file to W6YYY, would collisions be reduced or avoided if the radio was programmed to URCALL:W6YYY by W6XXX through the gateway and then send the file? Wouldn't D-Star find W6YYY? I'm not sure if D-Rats can respond without some way to hit the call button like on a 91AD. 
What I'm seeing is everyone is trying to use D-Rats with CQCQCQ like a broadcast when I would think that you want to send the message or file to a specific station just like APRS. It would be neat if the software could actually program the radios' URCALL and call button function, but I don't know if that is possible
Regards, James Deuel, N0XIA 
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