Every other digital voice mode gives you a number to dial. D-STAR gives you a text box eight characters wide, and expects you to know that the seventh character means one thing and the eighth means another. Get a character in the wrong column and nothing happens at all: no error, no beep, just a transmission that goes nowhere.
This page is the command set. What to type, and which column each character has to land in. If you have not read How a D-STAR Network Works, that page covers the four callsign fields and what they are for; this one is only about what goes in URCALL.
URCALL is not a text box that holds a word. It is eight fixed columns, and the radio pads whatever you type with spaces out to eight. Software at the far end reads those columns by number. It does not search the field for an L, it looks at column 8 and asks what is sitting there.
That single fact explains nearly every URCALL mistake. REF001CL looks like a word you type, so people assume W4DOCCL works the same way. It does not, because W4DOC is five characters and everything after it has landed one column to the left of where the software is looking.
There is one rule underneath all of this, and once you have it the rest stops needing memorising.
Column 8 always says which one. Which module of a repeater, which of someone's radios, or which command you are issuing. Everything to its left says who or what.
So when you address a repeater module normally, the module letter sits in column 8. When you call a person who is running portable, their suffix letter sits in column 8. And when you issue a link command, the L needs column 8, so the module letter takes one step left into column 7 to make room for it.
That is the entire reason REF001CL has the C where it does. Nothing else about the format changes.
The habit that saves you
Count backwards from the right, never forwards from the left. Put the command letter in the last column, the module letter in the one before it, and let the spaces fall where they fall. Radios with a callsign editor make this easy to see; radios that just show a text box do not, which is why most people get it wrong on a short callsign and right on a six character reflector name.
Set URCALL to CQCQCQ. That is a general call, out over the repeater and over whatever the repeater is currently linked to. It is the setting you spend almost all of your operating time in, and it is what you should return to the moment a link command has done its job.
Leaving a link command sitting in URCALL is the other classic mistake. The command fires again on every transmission, and everyone else hears a lot of nothing.
Put their callsign in URCALL and the network delivers your audio to wherever that station was last heard. That is callsign routing, and it is the feature D-STAR was built around.
If they are running a second radio with a suffix, the suffix goes in column 8, which means the callsign is followed by enough spaces to push it there. K2DLS portable is K2DLS P: five characters, two spaces, then P in the last column.
Name in columns 1 to 6, module letter in column 7, L in column 8.
| What you want | URCALL | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| REF001 module C | REF001CL | REF001, C, link |
| XRF001 module A | XRF001AL | XRF001, A, link |
| DCS006 module B | DCS006BL | DCS006, B, link |
| XLX432 module C | XLX432CL | XLX432, C, link |
Reflector names happen to be exactly six characters, which is why these look tidy and why they mislead. Nothing is being packed to the left; the six characters simply fill columns 1 to 6 on their own.
These are commands with no name attached, so columns 1 to 7 are spaces and the letter goes in column 8 by itself.
| Command | URCALL | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Unlink | seven spaces then U | Drops whatever link the repeater or hotspot currently holds |
| Echo | seven spaces then E | Plays your own transmission back to you, when the system offers it |
| Info | see below | Speaks the current link status |
Sources disagree: the info command
Two forms of the info command are published, and this page is not going to pick between them.
Three sources give seven spaces then I, with the I alone in column 8: the ircDDB Gateway user command list, the MDARC W6CX linking guide, and the Charlotte D-STAR linking tips.
One source, the LA D-STAR configuration page, gives six spaces then IX, putting I in column 7 and X in column 8.
Both are on the pages as published. It is possible they are describing different gateway software, or that one is simply in error. If you have a radio and a D-STAR system in front of you, this takes ten seconds to settle, and settling it is worth more than any amount of further reading.
The same command works on a repeater rather than a reflector, and this is where the column counting earns its keep. Repeater callsigns are rarely six characters, so you have to pad.
To link to W4DOC module C, URCALL is W4DOC CL: five characters, one space to fill column 6, then C in column 7 and L in column 8. Type W4DOCCL instead and every character sits one column to the left, the software reads a module letter of L and a command of nothing, and your transmission does exactly nothing.
This rests on two sources rather than five: the Charlotte D-STAR linking tips and the LA D-STAR configuration page. They agree with each other and with the column rule everything else on this page follows.
Linking joins two systems together until someone unlinks them. Routing is different: it sends one transmission to one place and changes nothing.
To route a call to a particular repeater and module, put a forward slash in column 1, then the callsign, then the module letter in column 8. Published examples include /JP1YDSB, /W6HRO B and /WA2WWWC.
The slash costs you a column. Eight columns minus the slash leaves seven for a callsign and a module letter, which is why a six character callsign fits with nothing to spare and a longer one does not fit at all.
Three sources: the QuadNet routing FAQ, the roblocher D-STAR quick start guide, and the LA D-STAR configuration page.
Most of these commands have a DTMF equivalent, which saves editing a callsign field on a radio that makes it painful. They only register while URCALL is set to CQCQCQ.
| DTMF | Same as | Family |
|---|---|---|
*1C | Link REF001 module C | REF, the D-Plus family |
B1A | Link XRF001 module A | XRF, the DExtra family |
D1B | Link DCS001 module B | DCS |
# | Unlink | any |
The leading character picks the protocol family, and the pattern holds at any reflector number. A dashboard that publishes both forms shows them side by side: XLX432 module C lists *432C for D-Plus, B432C for DExtra and D432C for DCS.
Three sources: the ircDDB Gateway user command list, the SharkRF openSPOT2 REF and XRF documentation, and the XLX432 reflector dashboard itself.
REF, XRF and DCS are not three brands of the same thing. They are three different linking protocols that grew up separately, and the prefix in URCALL is how you tell the gateway which one to speak.
A modern XLX reflector will usually answer to more than one of them, which is why the same room can be reachable as REF, XRF and DCS at once, with a different DTMF prefix for each. Which one you should use is normally settled by what the reflector's own dashboard tells you to use.
Three sources: the kb9mwr reflector notes, the SharkRF openSPOT2 documentation, and the XLX432 dashboard.
Send the link command once, wait for the confirmation, then put URCALL back to CQCQCQ before you talk. The link is a property of the repeater or hotspot, not of your transmission. It stays up without you holding it there, and it will stay up for the next person too, which is worth remembering before you unlink something on a shared machine.
The big idea
URCALL is eight columns, not a word. Column 8 says which one: which module, which of someone's radios, or which command. Everything left of it says who or what, padded with spaces you never see. Put the command letter in the last column, the module letter in the one before it, and count backwards from the right every time.
The eight column structure, the module letter in column 7, the L in column 8, and the seven spaces and U to unlink are carried by seven independent sources that agree completely: the ircDDB Gateway user command list, MDARC's W6CX guide, the Charlotte D-STAR linking tips, kb9mwr's reflector notes, the HOTERA training aid, the roblocher quick start guide, and the LA D-STAR configuration page.
The echo command, the slash routing form, the DTMF shortcuts and the three protocol families each rest on three sources. Linking to another repeater, and the suffix in column 8 when calling a person, each rest on two. Those counts are given in the sections themselves rather than hidden here.
Two smaller variants are published by a single source each and are therefore not given as instructions above: an alternative unlink written as the reflector name, its module letter and U; and an L alone in column 8 meaning link to whatever default the system has been configured with. Both come from the same page and neither is corroborated anywhere else that was checked.
And the info command is a genuine contradiction, set out in full in its own section. Nobody should have to guess which of two published forms is right, so it is left standing as two published forms.
A noncommercial hobby reference compiled by N6JET, gathered from public sources and shared freely for anyone interested in amateur digital voice. · Version 1.1 · September 2026