SOFA_KING
Member
What is happening to amateur DMR these days? As an early adopter I watched activity increase almost daily on wide-area talkgroups like North America and World Wide, but now there is so much activity that it's becoming hard to get any time on a timeslot! I used to have a nice codeplug with the entire State of Florida that had the basic format everyone used for TS1 and TS2. That worked good for that time period. Checking back now to update my radios and I'm completely shocked! What is going on out there? There are so many new repeaters with so many talkgroups on each time slot that I doubt any effective communication could be accomplished. And everyone is doing their own thing. Some have so many talkgroups jammed in each slot that there is no way to effectively use them all. And with PTT set to so many of these, how does anyone expect to hear a call? Standards seemed to have gone out the window.
Reading into what MARC says about this, the inevitable growth has changed the way these wide area talkgroups are to be used. These are now shaping up to be "calling" talkgroups, and no longer "rag chew" talkgroups. That makes good sense to me, as it's selfish to tie up a world full of repeaters for your own one-on-one QSO (it always was). After establishing contact, move to a working talkgroup like TAC310 or UA113 to further converse. Makes sense to me, but how many of these PTT activated QSO talkgroups are there? Will we need more? And if you put the TAC talkgroups in the same timeslot as calling talkgroups, isn't there going to be inevitable head-butting? There has to be. We need a format standard that will work with minimal clashes. And if people plan to travel with DMR, we need a base standard as a minimum. Programming takes time and you won't be able to stay on top of it the way things are constantly changing.
The efficient way I see to standardize this so effective communication can be accomplished is by placing all wide area "calling" talkgroups on TS1, and then put Local and TAC talkgroups on TS2. All wide area calling talkgroups should be ON full time (otherwise useless), local talkgroups set to ON full time and TAC or QSO talkgroups should be set to the PTT timer. Simply put, TS1 calling talkgroups and TS2 QSO talkgroups.
Thoughts?
Phil
Reading into what MARC says about this, the inevitable growth has changed the way these wide area talkgroups are to be used. These are now shaping up to be "calling" talkgroups, and no longer "rag chew" talkgroups. That makes good sense to me, as it's selfish to tie up a world full of repeaters for your own one-on-one QSO (it always was). After establishing contact, move to a working talkgroup like TAC310 or UA113 to further converse. Makes sense to me, but how many of these PTT activated QSO talkgroups are there? Will we need more? And if you put the TAC talkgroups in the same timeslot as calling talkgroups, isn't there going to be inevitable head-butting? There has to be. We need a format standard that will work with minimal clashes. And if people plan to travel with DMR, we need a base standard as a minimum. Programming takes time and you won't be able to stay on top of it the way things are constantly changing.
The efficient way I see to standardize this so effective communication can be accomplished is by placing all wide area "calling" talkgroups on TS1, and then put Local and TAC talkgroups on TS2. All wide area calling talkgroups should be ON full time (otherwise useless), local talkgroups set to ON full time and TAC or QSO talkgroups should be set to the PTT timer. Simply put, TS1 calling talkgroups and TS2 QSO talkgroups.
Thoughts?
Phil