Yes, DMR is complicated, until all of a sudden it’s not. Once you figure it out it makes sense and is straightforward. I’m glad I learned digital first on DMR.
I like working simplex in D-Star and C4FM. No repeaters. When the FM signal is weak and noisy, digital still sounds okay. DMR is unnecessarily complicated for amateur radio use.
Tried all 3. Currently dstar. Started with dmr, definitely the hardest. Fusion good, dstar good. I have an id52 and openspot 4 now. Sold the ft5 and at878. The ft5 was good but poor audio. The at878 is great for the price, a beast of a battery and good receiver. The Id52 is like the rolls Royce of handhelds, super quality.
I’d like to hear a digital mode that doesn’t sound like the person is under water. I have DMR and C4FM and neither has audio that’s easy to copy. Maybe it’s time to widen the bandwidth on these devices to allow more data through, and use less compression on audio. The engineers really have squeezed the audio down to the lowest possible bitrate before it’s unintelligible.
Well for me its Yaesu - the wires X system is well maintained and abundant with rooms - downside is you can't talk 1 to 1 over the network to a friend. Also, now the license conditions have changed, you can easily set up your own gateway at home using a base station and then go mobile with a handheld around your local area. Agree DMR is cheap - just a radio and a hotspot needed and can be done for £100. DMR you can 1 to 1 to a friend over the network which is just as well as its pretty dead otherwise. (I recently revived mine, I put every UK talkgroup apart from hubnet on static monitor and heard almost nothing. Even talkgroup 91, wordwide, was very easy to get conversation time). Also allstar - not a digital mode exctly but a mode with similar network infrastructure, another cheap way to get wordwide access from your armchair and hotspot. DStar is as old as the hills, sounds awful but its Icom so will be defended to the death by many.
I view digital as a rabbit hole that once you go down it all of your time is spent chasing the possibiities. I am still exploringHF and VHF & UHF voice and the possibilities that it offers so the rabbit hole - at my age - may never be visited, 73 M7BLC
I haven't got a favourite digital mode. Dmr I like for the audio quality. Fusion is so easy to understand and setup. Dstar not sure yet, just purchased a Icom hand portable and learning to set it up on my Openspot 4 pro.
I did struggle a little with the Icom manual. But some of your videos helped me a lot. Especially the one were you showed me how to program a hotspot into a channel. I would have been stuck if you hadn't told me to program it like a repeater with 0 shift and frequency. Many thanks.
I don't have access to a computer so, DMR & DSTAR is not the best choice for me. I only have one DMR and one DSTAR enabled repeater of each system in my area. Fusion was the easiest for me to get into digital modes as you stated, and also there are almost 15-20 Fusion capable repeaters in my area. Thanks for sharing. 73. KC3UEE
Which is the best scanner to buy to listen to digital shop watch and digital security radios in the uk? I have the Uniden 125xlt i do hear strange sounds on some frequencies i presume its digital some are on 453mhz? do you know of any videos that actually show what a digital signal sounds like when using the uniden 125xlt then at least i will know if i was to have a digital scanner that i could probably decode the signal and listen to it? Should i upgrade to the uniden 160dn OR should i get the Uniden SD200? any advice would be a great help. Thanks
Any mode i can send not only voice but pictures, location(prevoice), any data... But unfortunately only M17 is open standard, others need either license from yaesu,kenwood etc or they require non free codec. Open because CPUs are so cheap and powerful that you can decode anything on 5$ ARM/RISCV diy board these days(making my own digi HT).
I use D Star on an ID 52 plus. I think it is great. Who cares it is not real radio. I don't. I have just bought (yesterday) a Yaesu FT-991A. Once I get my head round it. I will have a go at C4FM. If I have it why not use it.
DSTAR........DMR is poor audio and cheap sh1t radios and c4fm is good audio but the accessibility unless it's official is poor.............Dstar is the one for me.
