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Orange County ARES/RACES/SKYWARN is attempting to acquire D-Star Repeaters from the county. ?We have a very good working relationship with the Office of Emergency Management. ?In the past two weeks we have been scrutinizing the D-Rats software to get a full understanding of how it works, capabilities and limitations. ?In order for us to pitch the idea of utilizing D-Rats to the OEM in support of an emergency activation, we have some questions and concerns that involve its operation which seems kludge at times. ?If someone can help find these workarounds, which we may have missed, it is greatly appreciated. ?This is a list compiled from three operators putting D-Rats through heavy paces. ?We apologize if these functions are available since we may not have discovered it. ?Thank you for your time.

Version 0.3.3b6

1. ?When you first open the program, you have no idea anything is happening unless you are looking at the event log.

It gets easier once you get past the learning curve.

2. ?The program should initiate an automatic ping and list all stations at log on and timely thereafter.

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Automatic pings and regular station updates would consume airtime better used to send and receive traffic. Several stations regularly sending status updates would congest the channel and make it difficult to pass traffic

3. ?I would expect to see my call listed in the right hand column including showing stations logged on. ?I have no idea if I am still connected as the program does not indicate anything other than "Online" in the bottom right. ?May times it says "online" but only to find out I was not. No rhyme or reason. ?My call sign showed up black on another stations screen.

There is no reason to see your own callsign on the station list. The status box in the lower right corner is not an "indicator". Use the drop-down arrow to select the status you show to other stations.

4. ?I would also expect to see the color of the station reflecting whether they are "Online or Unattended" change instantaneously. There seems to be latency.

A station's displayed status is only sent when they log on, log off, or answer a ping request. (See answer #2 above).

5. ?I would expect the stations list on the right to be instantaneously updated whenever a station changes it status. (On line or Unattended).

See answers 2 and 4

6 ? I would expect the station call sign to disappear when the station is off line or they shut down their computer. ?This only seems to happen if you clear all then re-ping all.?

Updating to the latest version addresses this.?

7. ?If a station is off line when you try to send a message, the message stays in the outbox and is not sent. ?The program should state that the message was not sent because recipient is not logged on.

That is a valid complaint.

8. ?The program seems to "choke" when left running on a Win7 64 bit machine. ?Running it as administrator and not in the x86 pathway.

Someone has identified a thread which gradually consumes more and more CPU cycles on some windows machines. The author is aware of this issue.

9. ?Why does the software tell me there is a message for "me" when sending email?

The sound notifies you of activity on the message tab, whether sent or received. Perhaps you could try a different sound.

10. ?The ability to open a file in the shared folder from the program is not possible.

10. ?The ability to have sub-folders in the shared folder. As is, all files are lumped together in one folder. ?This does not lend itself to ease of finding things.

When someone connects to your file section, you transmit your file list back to them. If you have a large amount of ?files in your shared folder, this may take some time and be prone to errors. Best to keep the only the files needed for a particular event in your shared folder.

11. ?Be able to move the map with the cursor and not have to use the scroll bars and have to continually re-center.

12. ?The ability to change the map labels font color and background color. ?Map labels are black on Red which makes it difficult to read. ?

13. ?The default message selection is an HICS-260 Patient Evacuation Form. ?Can we change it to default to the email selection?

They are listed alphabetically. Go to the menu bar>file>message templates and edit the ID field to make it alphabetically first.

14. ?What is the legend for the different colors on call signs in the Stations List?

Blue = Online

Yellow = Unattended

Gray = Offline

Black = Unknown

15. ?The stations list seems quirky. ?I usually leave my software running. ?I always have to clear all then re-ping to ?get an updated list. ?The list should refresh automatically and remove any stations that are off line.

It has been my experience that if you don't send any outbound traffic on your internet connection, your ISP puts it to sleep. See if your network card will allow you to send "keep alive" pulses. Failing that, create a QST to send your GPS co-ordinates. It keeps your connection alive, and doesn't print meaningless information on every stations screen. The newest version lets you automatically remove stations that have not been heard from in more than" X" minutes.

16. ?We notice that last update was over two years ago. ?Is this software still supported and will it continue going forward?

The latest version was released in February 2012 and is still supported. I suggest you join the mailing list at d-rats.com to receive the latest updates and communicate directly with the author.