For anyone who is familar with dstar:

I’m a new ham, I’ve never used dmr/fusion/dstar. Got an Icom ID-50 and today I set up a pi-star hotspot for using dstar.

I’m trying to connect to a reflector, and I can hop online and see my traffic on the dstar network (dstar users last heard) and on the reflector logs. I am not getting any traffic back though. It could just be that no one is answering, but on the logs I see there is traffic (none of which I’m hearing) and I’m thinking I’ve overlooked something. When I do an echo test it is successful so I thought I was in business, plus I seem to be getting regular time of day messages from the link.

About 10 minutes after my last cq my radio did announce a call sign, and I checked the logs and it was the callsign of a user who had just transmitted on the reflector module I’m on, but I didn’t hear the traffic.

I’m wondering if anyone can point out any obvious low hanging fruit that I should check. If the answer is that I need to take a step back and do some more research on my own so be it, I’m not looking for an easy button but I’ve already watched several YT videos and read forums and I haven’t spotted what I’m missing. Maybe it’s just that no one is answering (in spite of the traffic I’m seeing), but then my radio also announced that call sign with no voice traffic, so I’m thinking I may be fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of this thing.

Any help would be appreciated,
mjrwood

Well, about 5 minutes after my post I picked up a msg from group about joining their nightly net, so I guess I am receiving after all. I’m still puzzled about the call sign announcement with no additional traffic, I haven’t figured out what that was about yet. But other than that it seems like maybe it’s just quiet. I’ll keep trying.

make sure you are in “use reflector” and not “link reflector” What reflector are you trying to use  I can hop on and we can run some tests.

Ah thank you, I'm betting this was my issue. I've left the house or I'd take you up on your offer, I appreciate it. Tomorrow I'll run back through the steps and make sure to select "Use repeater" and then try a call. Before I left I found a Windows app called Doozy, I downloaded the Icom usb drivers and installed the program and was up and running on the reflector in no time flat, it seems to be nice alternative option. When that worked so easily I figured I must've been missing something with my radio settings. The reflector I'm hitting is REF090, it's "Alabama Link".