My never ending search for gadgetry Nirvana (part two) adventures into DMR radio!
Don’t tell anyone but I got another new radio this week
Here’s the thinking behind it. Sat in the shack is a Zum Hotspot running Pie-Star and giving me access to Icom’s D-Star digital network and Yaesu’s C4FM digital network. Both of which I enjoy via the respective Icom and Yaesu radios.
But I’ve also been aware that a growing number of the new Chines radios are coming with a digital network called DMR. The Zum hotspot can be configured to cover DMR but without a DMR radio I can’t really check it out.
I’ve come close to picking up a DMR HT radio on several occasions but always ended up backing out at the last moments of the checkout process. However, last week I actually went through with it and ordered an Anytone AT-D168. It’s only a basic radio and quite small but for the cost it’s actually a very good bit of kit and comes with everything to get up and running.
The radio arrived on Friday and I sat down and started working out just what I needed to do to get it working and hocked up to talk groups via the Zum. As with everything “Amateur Radio” there is not a single point of comprehensive information. It’s down to watching lots of YouTube videos, reading websites and good old trial and error. But to be honest, I really enjoy that challenge and journey of discovery.
At 3am on Saturday morning everything finally clicked into alignment and I finally got “first voice” out of the radio and I was overjoyed. Since then it has been a bit of fine tuning and expanding on what I had already learnt but it’s all looking good.
Now, this leads to another dilemma. I now have a Zum hotspot covering three digital networks. When it’s receiving traffic from one of the digital networks it stops receiving from the other two networks. Not a problem when only connected to two networks but now I’m missing more traffic than I’m getting.
The fixes to this are quite simple
Live with it (OK for now)
Get 2 more Zum Hotspots and set each one up on it’s own network.
I fear I know what the answer I’m going to follow is going to be!