DVAP finaly arrived!

Yes! It arrived. Finally. I ordered a DVAP dongle on February 27th and after almost 3 long months the parcel containing this little red wonder arrived by UPS. Because this dongle is so popular,the manufacturer could not keep up with delivering. When the DVAP which was becoming mine roled of the factoryline, the guy who distrubute the stuff put the wrong adress on the package and transported it to Canada. Anyway, with a long detour it finally reached my supplier Parmacom, who almost instantly directed it to me. You'll understand my eagerness to unpack it and give it a try.

In the package a smaller carton folded box appeared which houses everything. The box contains the red dongle (offcourse), a USB to mini-USB cable and a manual. Installing is easy, simply plug one end of the cable in the dongle and the other half in your computer. The dongle is equipped with its own litle antenna, which is replacable with any other SMA handheld antenna. It is said that the packed antenna is not a very good one (-3dB gain), but this problem is very simple to overcome by placing another one with a positive gain. Like this it should be no problem to cover the entire neighbourhood giving 10mW.

The dongle contains the driver, so installing is done automaticly. The DVAP website shows a link to the software which you simply download and is nothing more than 1 (one) exefile. Afer starting the program, you have to fill in your call (which you have to register for the second time with an extra C on the 8th place), choose a frequency in the 2m band and of you go. Of course there are some configurations to do on your transmitter, in my case a Icom IC-92AD porto. The website had some good examples wich I placed in the porto's memory. After hitting the powerbutton and hooking up the DVAP on reflector 17A, I immediately received a signal and on the program al kind of info showed up. Connected and working!

Big advantage is not only being QRV on any place where there isn't a repeater or a hotspot. As long as there is a connection with the Internet (Hurray for KPN hotspots!) 10mW is enought to talk wit any other D-star fan on the world! The weatherforecast for the coming weekend is perfect for outhouse testing the DVAP and its reach, the results will follow in a later blog.