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Hi Ed.

No, I don't believe "full duplex" in the DD repeaters either. In the old days, a full duplex 9600bd packet repeater required a bit-regen sync detect board on the receiving TNC which then fed the delayed data stream into the transmitter and keyed the PTT until the data sync was lost. TAPR used to make a PCB for the G3RUH modem boards and we had one here in Minneapolis on 2M. That was a real full duplex bent pipe repeater that acted as a piece of wire between any two stations. All it wanted was sync detect to begin transmitting. The actual TNC on site was mostly for sending an ID. But that is not how the Icom DD repeater works.

When we played with ID1 radios 20 years ago, we (I?) believed the ID1 could only make a one-to-one point-to-point link. It could not do a one-to-many multi-point link. Multi-point seemed to be the magic part of the DD repeater. So the main difficulty with using a single ID1 as a half duplex repeater is the need to be able to support more than one user at a time. I could possibly accept a "duplex" DD repeater where the RX and TX are decoupled from each other so that it can be receiving a packet from one user while transmitting data to another user on the output frequency. That is more or less what I was suggesting by using two radios and a router to handle the data between ports and users. This becomes a "full duplex" repeater in the same way that an Ethernet connection is full duplex. Packets are flowing both ways at the same time, but they are each "store and forward" in the controller or router.

I just don't know if the ID1s can be programmed to RX and TX without a known destination programmed into the radio. I think that is where some experimenting is needed. We just never tested it back then.... It sounds like maybe Vancouver did....

73, Doug Reed, N0NAS.