Yaesu And APCO P25 Amateur Radio Gear

[AK9R]

We don't need another digital format.

Agreed. But, we do have folks who key on the deficiencies in the existing digital protocols, so they seem to keep re-inventing the wheel.

Along came IRLP, and ECHOLink, then WIRES.

Which are just repeater linking protocols. What goes out over the air is still analog.

I hope Yaesu is sucessful, I just cannot see it happening.

Based on what we know now, I agree. However, we simply don't know enough.

Folks didn't think there was any point to D-Star when it came out and figured Icom would fail. Enough other folks saw the benefit and Icom sweetened the pot by making repeaters available for reduced or zero cost, so now we have lots of D-Star repeaters and Icom is selling lots of D-Star radios. Chicken and the egg. It doesn't matter which came first as long as we have both.

Yaesu has told us they are going to make an egg (maybe lay an egg ). We want to see the chickens. Yaesu says, just eat the egg while we work on developing chickens.

 

[N4DES]

Is the Yaesu Capable of NAC ?

I don't think anyone know's. Just throwing it out there, especially if digital carrier squelch works as it is supposed to.

 

[burner50]

The largest private radio communications networks in the country are going to NXDN in the not too distant future. The infrastructure has been getting deployed for a few years now.

I find it disappointing that Yaesu would rather create another digital format instead of use one of the several available...

 

[kayn1n32008]

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Which are just repeater linking protocols. What goes out over the air is still analog.

I agree they are linking protocols. My point is that there are two dominate ones and WIRES is next to non-existant. It is an 'oddball' protocol, that has not been accepted in wide spread use. It has also lead to Yaesu adding, for majority of Yaesu owners like myself, an annoying top level feature on their gear that tends to get mistakenly activated on a regular basis locally where I live. To the point that I have researched how to de-activate it, because the operators tend to be appliance ops that have zero clue as to what they have done. Oh and there are ZERO WIRES nodes here in my province, yet hundreds of IRLP/ECHOlink noded, with a large number being hybrids.

BOT:

IMO Yeasu sh*t the bed bringing out something that is new. Three reasons:
1) New and not compatible with EXISTING protocols. It makes ZERO sense to create a new competing protocol, that;

2) Has only a portable offered, a mobile 'on the way' and

3) ZERO infrastructure on the horizon. Unless one decides to make a 'flat audio' repeater, with ZERO FEC at the repeater.

 

[DiGiTaLD]

Along came IRLP, and ECHOLink, then WIRES..

And AllStar is far superior to all of them.

For experimental purposes, the fact that all of the aforementioned modes can be legally used on the ham bands is great. That's what its all about, at least for me - playing around with different technologies and doing my own thing. However, what we should remember is that analog FM is already interoperable. While its nice to have all these options for digital communication on the ham bands, when sh*t hits the fan, I think it would be wise for EmComm groups to go and just keep their plans primarily confined to well established modes that practically everyone has, i.e. analog FM, SSB, etc.

I am a bit disappointed to find out that this new Yaesu HT is not P25 compliant. However, part of me says that if you want a P25 radio, just go buy a real one with the software to program it if necessary. Other than the lack of front panel program-ability on most commercial radios, they are usually far superior to cheap ham gear anyway.

 

[kayn1n32008]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9780; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.8+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0.0.600 Mobile Safari/534.8+)

Along came IRLP, and ECHOLink, then WIRES..

And AllStar is far superior to all of them.

For experimental purposes, the fact that all of the aforementioned modes can be legally used on the ham bands is great. That's what its all about, at least for me - playing around with different technologies and doing my own thing. However, what we should remember is that analog FM is already interoperable. While its nice to have all these options for digital communication on the ham bands, when sh*t hits the fan, I think it would be wise for EmComm groups to go and just keep their plans primarily confined to well established modes that practically everyone has, i.e. analog FM, SSB, etc.

I am a bit disappointed to find out that this new Yaesu HT is not P25 compliant. However, part of me says that if you want a P25 radio, just go buy a real one with the software to program it if necessary. Other than the lack of front panel program-ability on most commercial radios, they are usually far superior to cheap ham gear anyway.

Not sure what world you live in but amateur operators have nobody but themselves to talk to, so I am confused as to why hams need FM to be "interoperable" we are not first responders needing to talk to other first responders. We are amateur radio operators talking to ourselves. If in my city we were ALL using dstar, I would not hesitate to use it locally if we had a disaster, my clubs uhf dstar repeater, used ONLY localy, functions no different than the analog uhf repeater at the same site(aside from digital voice).

We are not using a complex, computer run, multi site, microwave linked trunk system that requires a 25kva genset per site to keep it running when the power goes out.

We are ham operators that have, at least for my club, reliable,flexible radio systems that we can use, extend, and maintain on our own.

Of everything Yaesu had released about this radio makes me believe that it will not be able to compete with NXDN, P25(CONVENTIONAL) TRBO, or DSTAR.
IMO Yaesu is about 10yrs too late to compete with an unknown, brand new protocol.

Amateur radio operators by their very nature ARE "interopeable"