The May 12th meeting of SARC featured a presentation by Gord Dick VE7FKY, President of the Delta ARS and co-host of the CanNet and BC-SF D-Star nets. He started his presentation by reminding the group that DARS is sponsor of Comfest Oct. 2/3 and the BC QSO Party on Feb 5/6. He then reviewed the evolution of D-Star, giving many examples of how to program a D-Star radio under different scenarios. He explained that with the advent of D-Star plus in 2008, use of D-Star was greatly simplified and as a result, the number of users and repeaters increased dramatically. Methods of communicating with other D-Star users via local repeaters, links and reflectors were described. A live demonstration of D-RATS, which is "email, chat, & file transfer" software that can be interfaced with Winlink, followed with a discussion of how contacts can be made peer-to-peer, via 3rd party or via Internet. D-RATS is emerging as one of the favored tools for emergency communications. Many thanks to Gord for an excellent presentation.