Thanks,
There's a lot to unpack with this thread, not your post, but the entire thread in general. This has become humorous because of the assumptions and sweeping generalizations made by those that are very clearly not experienced setting up digital radio systems. CCR digital radios don't count, and using them as the bench mark for digital radio systems, and the cornerstone of an argument against digital, it verging on pure comedy. I really do try to treat people equally here, but there comes a point where the basis of the argument is just so flawed, it's not worth my time and effort to drag it back on course.
Basing the digital/analog argument off radios that were set up by someone else who may or may not have been experienced isn't much better. Simply picking up a digital radio and using it doesn't make for a solid footing for the argument.
Analog works very well, but there's a whole lot more to making radios work well outside the modulation method involved.
I've run Analog wide and narrow systems along side DMR, P25 and NXDN in real world environments, including setting up and aligning complete systems myself. Not amateur radio systems, but actual public safety (fire and sworn PD) systems.
There are some skills involved that go beyond the 35 question multiple choice amateur radio test. While I'm a ham myself, and have been for several decades, there's a difference between the hobby radio and the professional/paying radio work.
Like I said, I've run these systems side by side. By "run", I mean I align radios. I set up and entire NXDN trunked system from scratch. I tested the system, conferred with the manufacturer, and spent a lot of time adjusting the audio settings to make it work right. That took weeks. Not hours.
Modern digital radio systems can work as well and in some cases better than contemporary analog systems. I've done it. I've tested them in controlled environments.
The range argument involves a lot of variables that a simple end user of a digital radio won't necessarily have control over.
I took a 5 channel analog trunked system running 25KHz wide 800MHz channels and swapped out 2 of the analog repeaters with digital NXDN repeaters. That was same site, same combiners, same coax, same antennas. That let me test analog side by side with digital in a controlled situation. The difference is very close, but a properly designed and set up digital system will get a bit more range than analog. Recovering 1's and 0's out of the noise isn't hard. The recovered audio will be clean, until it's not. But that recovered digital audio will be useable when the analog signal gets so bad that the human brain cannot pull coherent sentences out of it.
Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. This wasn't someones amateur radio repeater. This wasn't a retail store radio. This wasn't something that someone slapped together to pull a project in under budget. This was me doing it, having all the time I needed to make it right.
And ITU will do the same thing. They are not pulling a standard out of a hat and assigning marine radios to use it. It's a process that will involve a lot of testing. That was covered in the article (that I think most commenters haven't read). All one has to do is see what's been done with the AIS systems bouncing digital signals around with a few watts on VHF marine channels. I have an AIS receiver at one of my high sites, and I very regularly get hundreds of miles of range out of an AIS burst. Best I've done so far was 750 miles. Analog won't do that with a recoverable signal.
And there are some really good benefits to digital when compared to analog. Again, the ITU covered that well in their documents. The ability to forward packets from radio to radio when needed to extend range. True data capability. Native radio ID for each and every transmission. Ability to tag all traffic with lat/lon. Navigation data. Warnings. Localized weather alerts. A lot of things that are not currently done on analog.
At no point did they claim that there would be a slash-cut to digital, leaving everyone out in the cold. There is nothing that says that all channels -must- be digital. Mixed mode is a real functional feature that might be a good solution. The ITU and other involved groups might decide to keep some channels analog. Or not. The standard hasn't been published yet.
But that sure hasn't stopped people from making those sweeping generalizations or wild claims. Dooming something like this to failure without knowing the technical details just shows a childish knee jerk reaction to something they don't have complete information on.
The nice thing is that the ITU won't be asking the amateur radio community, or the scanner community for their approval on this. The decision won't be left up to opinions, or how some digital radio set up a decade ago for a retail operation worked.
And thankfully the decision won't be based off the opinion of some "expert" with a CCR digital radio….
And claims of a $1,200.00 marine digital VHF radios? I can buy a brand new, modern <$400 NXDN/analog/mixed mode VHF radio with GPS installed as well as IP67 and FCC Part 80 certification right now, today. And those prices continue to drop….
Believe it or not, there are actual intelligent engineers and professionals at the ITU that will make decisions outside the realm of radioreference. They did just fine with GMDSS, EPRIBS and lots of other technology that provides better results than the old analog systems did.
