I didn't know digital could sound this good!

Just had a real eye-opener the last few days, but confirmed my feelings towards hot-spots.

* P25 Phase 1 in wideband 25k mode - holy cow that's nice. Even when heard on a consumer-grade scanner.

* System Fusion - VW / wideband mode. Awesome, but falls just a *hair* short of P25 Wide as long as FEC is not really that necessary for the link.

* DMR - Just as good. Of course the Motorola's can really belt out high-quality audio. Usually with mic-agc off and gain tweaked to the user. Covered for many years.

But here's my big but! (snicker)

Radio-to-radio, ie radio> repeater > radio can be just awesome.

Hot Spots - *can* be good, but due to poor-quality ISP connections, including using a cell-phone, most are a joke to communicate with. Similar to having a long rag-chew with someone with an intermittent mic cable.

Does everyone not know about prime-time congesion, especially with consumer home ISP setups? Or the fact that unless you have a *guaranteed commercial* ISP account, your UDP packets, (one-way unacked packets) are the FIRST things that get dropped during congestion?

The hot-spots I've heard, on all 3 of the formats listed above, usually are freaking AWESOME but only with a high quality ISP account.

Or we can keep talking with virtual broken mic connectors which are really dropped UDP packets (aside from massive RF issues)

Rant over. Guess I'm a digital grump about hot spots and poor ISP connections ..... back to my cave.

Emergency TG's using home-isp connections?

My last point would be to those utilizing "emergency" talkgroups. Are you sure that during a REAL emergency, that your internet link won't be dropping UDP packets like crazy or just shut down completely? Using a hotspot or not ...

I love digital, but I'm not sure how many know that the underlying infrastructure link is SO important if you want a decent reliable signal.

....ah the rock fits over me nicely now...

hertzian said:

My last point would be to those utilizing "emergency" talkgroups. Are you sure that during a REAL emergency, that your internet link won't be dropping UDP packets like crazy or just shut down completely? Using a hotspot or not ...

I love digital, but I'm not sure how many know that the underlying infrastructure link is SO important if you want a decent reliable signal.

....ah the rock fits over me nicely now...

Click to expand...

That is a very good point. At one of my sites, I am running 5 repeaters. Two Quantars for P25 (one for repeater and one for RF link), one XPR8400 for DMR (linked via Verizon Hotspot), one TKR-850 for GMRS (linked over the same hotspot) and one BCR-40U for analog ham. During Hurricane Florence, all of the repeaters worked great until the power went out. At that point, everything except the BCR-40U was offline. Even after the power was restored at the site, the closest cell-tower was still offline, so no VOIP linking. That cell tower was so overloaded, that texts barely went through and when it ran out of fuel, it was over.

Now, the repeaters still worked for local comms when they had power. The Quantars were still linked too as it was strictly RF for the backhaul. The main problem was keeping the generators at the other sites fueled as gas station lines were very long and the stations ran out of fuel quickly. We were without power for 6 days and without internet/cell service for about 9 days. As time went on, even the commercial broadcasters started dropping off the air as their fuel supply was exhausted. One by one, they all went off the air.

One issue many people are having is they are wanting to run a hotspot on a WiFi network instead of being hard wired to the router. A WiFi connection, while often a great convenience, it can have issues. Especially when other family members are using that same WiFi access point. So a hard wired connection can often improve the overall experience.

The hotspot I'm using at the site has 3 wired ports. No WIFI for the repeaters. The hotspot also is using an external antenna, so the signal is always great.

I guess I just get a little frustrated at friends with conversations like this:

"Hey I listened to some DMR last night, and I can't stand the audio."

"Oh man, that's too bad. What radio did you get ?- maybe I can help you program it"

"No radio - just after dinner while my family was streaming movies, I tethered my laptop to my phone, and listened to the streaming servers. From what I could make out, some guy on worldwide was riding in a cab, and was using an um, heatspot with his phone or something like that. I think he had an old beater Motorola, and it sounded like he was shouting. So broken up. I don't know how you can listen to dmr."

That's where I just have to shrug it off I guess. Far too many people I've met who say they've listened to digital, haven't really evaluated it from an honest-to-goodness radio <> radio link, and issue the blanket statements about digital.

There's no coming back from that really.

I know what you're saying. I gave up promoting digital. I did open a lot of eyes demonstrating my repeaters. The ones I mentioned above are on the same antenna, so when the analog would cut out on the fringes, the digital would still work great. It changed a lot of people's minds, but a lot of others just flat out refused to give it a chance and others, as you've noticed, use the wrong equipment and then blame the mode. It's frustrating, so I gave up.

We installed a solar backup system with batteries on our P25 800 MHz trunked system so it would stay operational when the generator stops. Just a thought.

I have also tried to promote digital radio for amateur radio. Our club purchased a Yaesu System Fusion repeater but only three people bought a radio. We also have a DMR repeater and that seemed to really take off. There are a few DStar repeaters close but only two of us that use them. It’s a shame that other hams are still in an analog world. Digital is so much better. Change is very slow.

I think the main drawback for digital is that it is dependent on internet. I have D-Star and DMR but if the internet dies, I like to know I can still use old antenna and power watts to get to someone.



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Digital isn’t necessarily dependent on the internet. In a disaster, repeaters can be liked my microwaves. I get so sick of some of the hams around here that won’t give DMR a chance because “when the grid goes down, DMR is useless”, which I’m a local and statewide sense is a load of BS. During Florence, SCEMD and the hams around the state we’re trying to use HF on 20, 40, and 80 meters. Guess what? It didn’t work AT ALL. They had to rely on the statewide VHF-FM and UHF-DMR systems to communicate. Now if this was Texas, then HF would probably work. Digital has a lot more to offer then most other services. Data, time slots, clear audio, etc.


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The repeater will still work locally like an analog repeater. It just won’t have some talkgroups available. So it’s still better than analog.

You can also use system fusion, dstar and DV voice on hf.

w1haf said:

The repeater will still work locally like an analog repeater. It just won’t have some talkgroups available. So it’s still better than analog.

Click to expand...

Exactly my point. Some folks just are too narrow-minded to even think about anything else besides HF.


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Good info guys! Im on digital anyway but thought it wouldn’t work without internet. I was wrong. Feeling proud of my kenwood th-d74 now hrhehe .. and my dmr radios too


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ecarvalho said:

I think the main drawback for digital is that it is dependent on internet. .....

Click to expand...

No, it's not. If you believe it is, you need to do more research.

DSTAR is being used on HF.

A digital repeater is no more dependent on internet than an analog repeater.
Some linked systems use microwave or other RF paths having nothing to do with the internet.

Just depends...

P25 is definitely the most natural sounding digital, with YSF coming in at a close second. Both are FDMA C4FM which explains a lot. And I notice good audio in wide and narrow band.

P25 Phase 2 (for commercial/government systems), and DMR sound the same to me. Not as punchy and clean as C4FM modulations. Some sound good when tuned right - some sound like utter garbage.

Then (sorry folks) D-star dredging the bottom of the pile. I thought it was the IC91A I started on - but an ID-51A and an ID-5100A were just as ugly to me.

As for the internet part... totally true. Luckily the SCHEART DMR system, with the exception of a handful of repeaters (like 6 out of the 34) are on a microwave backhaul with their own C-Bridge and Parrot Server. So far no issues even during some nasty storms.

NavyBOFH said:

Then (sorry folks) D-star dredging the bottom of the pile.

Click to expand...

You might want to seek out someone with a Kenwood TH-D74. When I transmit with my D74, I routinely get "good audio" comments from Icom users. Kenwood may be doing something different with the transmit audio path. Granted, it's not as good as full-bandwidth P25 or System Fusion, but it's better than many Icoms.

I ran into ONE person with a Kenwood D-Star and never crossed my mind to play with it. The other issue here is that D-Star is more of a cult following since DMR swept the state - and while my area has two D-Star systems... one is completely down until the owner gets a new power supply, and the other is the one running the registration gateway which has been down for months. So even when I could get on it... it wasn’t the full experience.

If the Kenwood is better that’s a good step... but the price needs to drastically come down. For that price I bought both a VHF and UHF Motorola P25 HT and play with the local P25 repeater which I’ll be looking unto bridging soon.

NavyBOFH said:

If the Kenwood is better that’s a good step... but the price needs to drastically come down. For that price I bought both a VHF and UHF Motorola P25 HT and play with the local P25 repeater which I’ll be looking unto bridging soon.

Click to expand...

I agree that the TH-D74 isn't a cheap piece of kit. But, I'll bet that you didn't buy those Motorola P25 radios new.

Nope - not dependent on the internet unless you need wide area networking.

And as mentioned, an end-user doesn't HAVE to use all that - if they were happy with just stand-alone analog repeaters, they would be just as happy using the LOCAL talkgroup, which isn't part of the WAN. And even if a system IS part of a digital network, and seems too confusing, just stick to the local talkgroup.

I brought a handful back into the DMR / digital fold when they didn't understand what was going on with a pre-loaded codeplug, and got hit over the head with too many variables, that they swore they'd stick to analog only.

I coached them to write their OWN codeplug, starting from scratch, with the goal of reaching only the LOCAL talkgroup, and a number of friend's contact ID's.

The ground-up approach of KISS, without introducing too many variables at once, made the light-bulbs come on at a natural pace, and of course they started expanding the codeplug their own way later.

Don't get me wrong - I also love good Analog systems too! It takes a lot of work to maintain and sound good.

Basically, there's room and reason for ALL modes, but I think digital, and DMR in particular is not well understood by newcomers getting hit over the head with all the variables - and not hearing what a radio < repeater > radio contact can sound like on the LOCAL talkgroup. Take it from there if they want to, but never denigrate their abilities if the local TG satisfies their needs.

Know your audience

I too love HF, (who else would run an "on-ground" receive only loop antenna) .

In some groups, they have ZERO interest in wide-area networking, no challenge. I get it.

So I switch to something familiar to many: you know the guy on the vhf / uhf net that is in an antenna-constricted area, with only a handheld that is just painful to communicate with on the fringes? And for whatever reason can't upgrade to more power or an external antenna?

So I inform him that perhaps the reason there is nobody talking to you is that you are just not making the machine well enough for people to not suffer from listener fatigue?

In that case, with the go / no-go nature of P25, DMR, or Fusion, there is a good chance that even with a weak signal, all the error-correction and so forth will make a huge difference. People will be willing to talk because their ears aren't bleeding.

As much as I like my P25 Motorola XTS5000, for that friend, I suggested System Fusion, which runs mixed mode on a machine here, and he can run with the simplicity of "follow the leader", and not have to worry about it when I automatically switch him over to Fusion from analog with MY radio! TADA.

And not a single internet connection needed!