TG 310 on Brandmeister Announcement

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TAC310 was great as people from all around the world used it. Now they are telling people to use 3100 which is USA Nationwide. People outside of the US have asked where they can go to hang out if they didn't want to use talkgroup 91. Many have switched over to the QuadNet Array on talkgroup 31012. It is a multi mode network which combines D-STAR, Brandmeister DMR, DMR Plus, Yaesu System Fusion and also Wires-X. For more information about the Array you can visit the QuadNet website at www.openquad.net
 

N4GIX

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They finally got tired of all the hotspot loops...
This has been happening long before 'hotspots' became a common thing. I personally know 12 repeater owners who've had their finals cooked to death from constant key downs over the last five years.

My local DMR repeater(s) have only True Local, Indiana Statewide, and Midwest Regional as full-time TGs. Every other TG is PTTA only. This isn't a problem for us users here. If I am talking to someone on Indiana Statewide we will QSY to one of the TAC TGs if we wish to talk for more than five minutes. This is how they are supposed to be used after all! :cool:
 

KD8DVR

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Why would I want to monitor TAC 310?

I like to listen to the chatter.

-SF


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Well, the tac groups aren't designed to be parked on. They are designed for people to move off a busy group to have one on one qsos. 310 isn't a call group.

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N4GIX

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Why would I want to monitor TAC 310?

I like to listen to the chatter.
There shouldn't be any "chatter" on TAC and similar dynamic talk groups. One must understand the hierarchical structure of the talk groups to grasp the principles involved. It really isn't overly complicated, but honestly it is not explained very well, IMHO.

Let's examine a case example to illustrate. We are monitoring one of the static talk groups such as "Midwest Regional" (MR) and make a contact with one of the other users. If we two folks continue to communicate on that talk group, then we are trying up the resources of every repeater that has that TG as a static group. "MR" encompasses a very large area of six states. While I don't have exact figures let's assume there are 200 repeaters connected full-time to "MR", which is a reasonable guesstimate.

That means that the two people talking are tying up the time slots of 200 repeaters just to have a QSO, meaning that 198 other repeaters are tied up repeating their conversation*! That is a HUGE waste of resources. Instead, they should arrange between themselves to QSY (change) to one of the multiple "dynamic TGs" such as TAC311. Once they do that, then they are only using the two repeaters in their respective areas.

* Note that they are effectively denying the users of the other 198 repeaters use of that time slot by their actions.

I've actually heard two folks using the same repeater in St. Louis, MO carry on a long QSO on the MR talk group tying up the ~200 repeaters for 20 minutes, when they should have simply switched to their repeater's LOCAL talk group!

Now consider the case of two folks using the Worldwide English TG. They are potentially keying up every repeater in the bloody world simultaneously! Again an exact number isn't available since that number changes hourly, but a reasonable guesstimate would be around 3,000... Wow, talk about a waste of resources!!!

Now all this was before the proliferation of "hot spots"... Take the same example of two folks conversing on the MR talk group, but both of them are using "hot spots." If they switch to one of the available dynamic TGs such as TAC310 then they won't be keying up any repeaters at all except for a few that may have had TAC310 activated and they hadn't yet timed out.

Hopefully all the above is clear enough, and explains why we should "use it, but not abuse it" with regards to static versus dynamic talk groups. :cool:
 
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bill4long

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This has been happening long before 'hotspots' became a common thing. I personally know 12 repeater owners who've had their finals cooked to death from constant key downs over the last five years.

So what are you saying? That they were foolish to allow their non-full-duty repeaters to be usable on TGs that get near constant use?

At any rate, hotspots are not the problem at all.
 
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bill4long

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Look, let's put the TAC 310 blame where it squarely is: Brandmeister for not making the TAC groups dynamic in the first place, and DMRX who allowed it to happen for as long as they did. They enabled people to turn TAC 310 into a hang out for a myriad of hotspotters. They let it go on for at least a year and a 1/2 before having a fit and pulling the plug. (As of today, BM has 310 completely disabled.) So all the poor hotspotters who had no idea what the intent of DMRX was, are scrambling to find a new home. Maybe they'll end up on 3100. We'll see. (For the most part, I bailed out of BM a while back when the TGIF network got going. I find it a more kinder and gentler network, more reliable, and transparently managed by Americans and not Russians.)
 
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AI7PM

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Look, let's put the TAC 310 blame where it squarely is: Brandmeister for not......

Who has time and money invested in the system(s)? Hotspot owners and CCR HT owners?
I don't think I've ever seen a single repeater, system of linked repeaters, DSTAR or DMR system where some hams didn't treat the owners like they (the ham user) were owed or entitled to something, owed access to the system, or should be guaranteed a say in it's operation.
The people running these things aren't a public utility being paid for the service. Operators using these systems are guest on someone elses' equipment and dime. If they don't like the way it's managed, let them cough up the quid and spend the time building something one to their liking.
 

bill4long

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AI7PM, why didn't DMRX complain to Brandmeister sooner? Doesn't seem as if anyone gave a crap until very recently. The hotspot users certainly are not to blame. There are no sysops on TAC 310. I was listening a large part of the day and night to TAC 310 for 1.5 years and not once heard anyone say that TAC 310 shouldn't be in constant use. There was no evidence that anyone was aware of a problem or "rule violation." The simple solution was to just allow 310 to continue on what it de facto became, a hangout for mostly hotspot users. DMRX repeaters could have delinked 310. Some people would rather make a big fuss. Whatever. People are moving on. Not a big deal.
 
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SlyFerret

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Thanks for taking the time to type that up, N4GIX! I’m still very new to DMR, so that was helpful.

What talkgroups should I listen to to monitor the chatter, since TAC 310 is changing?

Would the Midwest TG or the Ohio state wide TG be the right ones? Or are there others that would be more interesting with regular traffic?

-SF


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N4GIX

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Would the Midwest TG or the Ohio state wide TG be the right ones? Or are there others that would be more interesting with regular traffic?
I programmed my base, mobile and HT(s) so that I have all of the static (full-time) TGs in a Scan List, then park on my Local TG and enable scan.

However that isn't possible with a hot spot, which is limited to monitoring one TG at a time, and you have no access at all to any repeater's Local TG since it isn't connected to the internet. In my area the Local TG gets the most traffic, but I do hear some on Worldwide English or North America.
 

N4GIX

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So what are you saying? That they were foolish to allow their non-full-duty repeaters to be usable on TGs that get near constant use?
Most of the DMR repeaters are lower-tier Motorola hardware, but despite the "famous name" are still "two mobiles in a box". Like all mobile radios they are only rated for about 50% duty cycle. The original DMR-MARC network uses C-Bridges for the most part, and are limited to how the C-Bridge administrator has configured the available TGs. If the C-Bridge admin has set a TG as static (i.e. full-time) the local repeater owner either carries that TG or not. That's the limit of their choice.

My local UHF and VHF DMR repeaters are an exception since they are both top of the line Motorolas, rated for 100% duty cycle, and are housed in a climate controlled building. W9CTO who owns them is lucky in that he is the tower manager so he has no rent to pay. His expenses were the three repeaters he owns, antennas and 1.5" heliax, as well as the costs of installation and annual inspection. Even so his total investment pushed close to $20k just for the hardware.

The original scheme of having tiered wide-area TGs as "calling only" and providing multiple dynamic TGs such as the TAC groups for extended conversations worked just fine for the first few years. However, the flood of inexpensive DMR radio equipment coming onto the market prompted a rapid increase in users. These "new users" for the most part have never bothered to learn how the system was set up, and that's when the problem(s) began.

There are plethora of "Etiquette Guides for DMR" out on the web, but one needs to take the time to educate one's self to learn more than just pushing a PTT and starting to yak away. One such is fairly recent:
DMR Rag Chewing and Hotspot Etiquette | DMR For Dummies

This one is the "original etiquette guide:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...e_to_DMR.pdf&usg=AOvVaw3xxmMU_JDpQIoA5316cQBR
 

bill4long

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..the flood of inexpensive DMR radio equipment coming onto the market prompted a rapid increase in users. These "new users" for the most part have never bothered to learn how the system was set up, and that's when the problem(s) began.

How would anyone reasonably know that TAC 310 was a not for hangout? Why did DMRX and/or Brandmeister let it go on so long? Why weren't there people on 310 there to inform the Ignorant Masses of that shouldn't use it as a hangout? I listened to 310 for 1.5 years at least and never heard any such warnings. Thank the ham radio gods the storm is over. Disaster averted. I sure hope all those injured repeater owners out there can recover from the outrageous injustice of it all. :sleep:
 
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DaveNF2G

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The first problem with DMR in ham radio is that it is not much like ham radio. That is what is at the root of these usage problems. People expect to be able to tune into a ham repeater and hear whoever might be chatting on it, and join in if they wish.
 
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