[W8MWA] Road map to the future?

[Josh Prichard]

So this was my first visit to the club and it has left me a little confused
about the situation.  This first visit I wanted to see how the club was and
whether it was a club worth joining or not.  Seems like the club may be
divided on a lot of things.

Forgive me if I get the names wrong as I honestly stink at names.....

Michael gave a pretty darn good speech about the organization of the club.
He hit on many good points.  Mainly... where is this club heading and how
to get more members?  Spence hit on the future too.  The topic was changed
and on went the meeting.  Dean brought up that he has echolink/irlp ready
to link into the repeater and soon the topic was changed.  The future won't
happen unless some changes are made and the meeting discussions kinda stick
to one topic instead of floating around and avoiding topics.  Perhaps get a
roster of topics for the meeting then allot time to each topic.

I'll be new to the club so I don't expect what I have to say to hold much
weight as whom wants a new guy coming in and shaking the tree.  I'm curious
as to what is growing in this tree and plan to to shake it hard.  So to get
to my point.... I still have the question on where this club is going and
would like to get a discussion going on the topic.

Fusion was mentioned as a possible repeater implementation.
I'm a  big fan of DMR as I have expressed in previous postings.
DStar I hear a lot of complaints about and would want to avoid all
together.

The fusion repeaters can handle both digital/analog.  Can be linked with
other repeaters over the internet.

The dmr repeaters are pretty much the same.  Can be both digital/analog and
linked to many talkgroups over the internet as well.

Since internet is already planned for the repeater sites.... if it
happens.... the phone line to the repeater site could be disconnected and
the club could save that much money a month.  We also would have internet
in place for these digital systems.

As of right now I do believe the fusion would be cheaper for the club to
get a repeater on the air assuming the deal is still available from Yaesu.
DMR costs a tad more for the repeater but is still affordable.  The trade
off is on the users side.  Fusion radios are yaesu branded so they cost
more for users to use.  DMR has the Chinese radios coming out along with
Motorola and a few other brands.  It is cheaper for the user to start into
digital territory.

So my thoughts..... Morgantown don't have any digital repeaters that I'm
aware of.  The club could be the first to offer such a thing and perhaps
would draw in more members.  I love playing with new modes and I would
assume a lot of other hams do as well.  Since the Yaesu repeater would cost
the club less.... perhaps get one and replace the current VHF repeater and
run it in dual analog/digital mode so at least people whom don't have the
digital radios yet can still talk on the repeater.  Later on if the club
starts to get more memebers or something comes along... try to replace the
UHF repeater with a DMR repeater.  This would give the Morgantown area the
best of both digital worlds.  Perhaps if the club makes it this far....
start to work with our neighbor clubs.... get them on the digital bandwagon
and start to create a system that would put the ham talk system to shame.
As of right now I believe there is 1 fusion system and 4 dmr systems in
West Virginia.

Either direction the club would take would at least open it up to more
activity as both systems can be linked to other repeaters/talkgroups.  If
not digital right now at least think about opening up and letting
echolink/irlp get connected up.  I ran echolink for a while into the local
repeater where I used to live and never had a problem out of it.

Thoughts?

Also wow this ran longer than I had expected.....
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