[drats_users] Alabama Plans for D-Star Usage during SET (October 4, 2008)

[Nate Duehr]

Les Rayburn wrote:
> As most of you know, the successful use of the D-Star system during a 
> state wide event requires routing users and repeaters to a common 
> "reflector" through the gateway. Unfortunately, the number of these 
> reflectors are limited. Like an net frequency on HF, there is no such 
> thing as "owning" a reflector for your exclusive use. It's very much 
> first come-first served.

Not to argue, but just pointing out, I think there's 11 Reflectors now 
with 3 sub-channels on each.

So we're almost to a point where there would be a Reflector channel PER 
STATE available...

And unless we're talking nuclear war, the chances that any disaster 
would befall the entire continental U.S. are pretty slim...

So... I don't think there's really a "problem" here, other than 
coordination of resources.

Knowing who "owned" each Reflector and where they're located (in 
general, in case the ISP that's hosting them really doesn't want someone 
to know) and having a way to communicate with each Reflector owner about 
things would be nice.

The location data is important, because the Reflectors are often 
overseas at this point in time.

We set up a way to forward messages to all Reflector and node owners on 
http://status.irlp.net for the IRLP network YEARS ago, and it allows 
people to send messages to the owners without giving away their e-mail 
addresses, etc...

Would be nice if dstarusers.org had similar properties.  But... then 
again, sometimes it's difficult to even find out who's in charge of THAT 
site, let alone the Gateways and Reflectors...

All that's really needed is a "D-STAR Reflector Info" web page, and 
someone to go track down all the owners and ask for contact info, but it 
sure would be better if that page was at a "central" location like 
dstarusers.org or similar...

How do we get this done?  (I have a feeling that we don't... not without 
help from the Reflector owners or Robin.)

Nate WY0X