For a couple of days now, I have been following, remotely, the recovery of an amateur radio operator who, in his thirties, is recovering from a serious stroke, which came in the wake of tumor surgery. The stroke left him paralyzed and with a serious speech impairement, at least temporarily.

In rehabilitation, his family set up for him a local access point to the amateur radio D-STAR digital voice communication network, which he now can access with a small handheld transceiver. Now that his speech is returning, he is supposed to practice as much as possible – and his ham radio transceiver allows him to do just that. A few days ago, he told how difficult and tiring it was, but he kept on going. His speech gets better everyday, and due to the connected network of digital radio repeaters, his radio friends all over Germany share in his delight.

There has been a lot of (sometimes polemic) discussion whether the Digital Voice (or D-STAR) network was amateur radio at all. Only one manufacturer supplies the radios (even though others could, it is not that ICOM has a patent or anything), the vocoder (AMBE) is proprietary, and the repeaters and access points are linked via Internet. And for a while, you had to buy an ICOM repeater,but this has changed.

To me, this radio ham’s story shows that Digital Voice is ham radio at its best. Ham radio has always also been about providing a window to the world for handicapped people, a medium to interact socially, make friends, forget their specific challenge for a while – long before Facebook, Google+ and the like came along. 

We are at present setting up a Digital Voice repeater for Ulm, at the university. It is a homebrew (non-ICOM) solution, using surplus Motorola GM1200 trunked network transceivers, a soundcard, a surplus HP laptop. Putting it together, installing and fine-tuning the software has been a lot of fun. Due to its location, it will provide easy access from three large hospitals, one of which provides specialized care to stroke victims. If, indeed, it could provide a window on the world for one radio amateur in one of these hospitals, all our efforts would have paid off nicely.

Advertisement