John

Completely agree.

Where I’ve interworked FM to D-Star, I’ve found the results to be perfectly acceptable within the confines of Amateur Radio.

You wouldn’t want to listen to Bartok or One Direction over it, but it works and that’s what matters.

All the time we have the entrenched view of “this is my system and it won’t connect to your system” we risk siloing and isolating users.  The net effect is less usage on amateur bands and less amateurs – exactly the effect that is being seen in many countries.

On the callsign ID, that is an interesting point.  Rules do vary from country to country, but what I’ve found is that Amateurs naturally ID every few minutes anyway.  In the UK, rules were relaxed on D-Star so that no voice ID is required, but you will still typically here an over start with “G6TBA from G4ULF” and end with “from G4ULF.”  Old habits die hard, and I certainly ID on every over still.

So, again, like you, I think these are both non-issues.

To me, the benefits in terms of increase usage and more linking possibilities far outweigh these issues. 

BTW, EchoIRLP does NOT allow interworking IRLP and Echolink as the IRLP crowd insist on the end-point being a repeater.    EchoIRLP allows a repeater to act as an IRLP node and and Echolink node, but it does not bridge the audio together.

David