Hey, before we get started, be sure to head over to ham Radio two dot com forward slash email dash sign up to join my email list of over nineteen thousand subscribers, where I like to send emails about upcoming events, upcoming shopping deals, keep you updated with all the stuff going on with my videos. Once that list reaches twenty thousand, I will be doing a giveaway of another HF radio sign up today. And thank you for the support. I
should done mute. Okay, I show seven o'clock in Texas, and I'm just gonna go ahead and switch right over here to that screen right there, guys, good evening. Thank you for joining us tonight. Hey, Renee, I see Renee six in the chat. We're going to talk about M. Seventeen with Ed and Steve tonight. And I got a brand new radio, the Connect Systems see us seven seventeen. It even says M. Seventeen on the radio right there, so you know it's legit. It's like reading something on
the internet. You know it's true because you read it on the internet, right, But supposedly this is the one that works. So we'll talk about that here. In a second, I'm going to shout out to the YouTube channel members tonight, the ones who have joined the chat. Wayne Tom, I see you guys in there, Grayman, Poda, Steve, what's up? Jody v A five s Ar Good evening, ed Ac three, I k Randall k k R five ee Lee, see you in there. Ronald T Man see you guys in there. Good,
good evening to all. Thank you to those of you who came out to the PODA event yesterday. We didn't have very many people, maybe eight or ten something like that, maybe now probably like seven or eight something like that, but it was a fun time. We set up the hex being we made a lot of contacts. Ten meters was open, fifteen meters was open, Don and five SKT was out there. We plugged in the triplexer to the hex beam. We ran ten meters, ran fifteen meters, we
ran some twenty meters. Got a couple of a couple of metaga out there named Mike who was a technician and he sat there on ten meters with his G ninety and made a lot of contacts. So it was it was a fun time. So hopefully you guys got to get on the air yesterday for Parks on the Air New York Q so party was apparently that same day or same weekend, and Jamboree on the air was of course on Saturday, so there was a lot of
people on the air on Saturday. Not a bad thing, just made a lot of contacts and it was all a good thing. So thank you to those of you who I worked over the air. That was a fun time.
So all right, so M seventeen I will give a brief well i'll I'll let Steve or Ed give a brief explanation of what M seventeen is, because every time I do one of these videos, I go back and people are like, well, it would have hoped if you would explain what IM said, and like, literally, we've done that like a half dozen times, because this is not the first time we've talked about N seventeen on the show. So I will get them to give you a brief explanation of what M seventeen is. I can give you.
My explanation is it's a brand new digital Kodak using Dan, brand new digital voice mode using Kodeak two. I think it's Kodak too. I think it's two. But it's an open source CODEAC so they're laughing at me right now. I can see them in zoom. They're laughing at me. That's all right, it's all right, it's right. They're probably laughing at my Accent's New York guys laughed at the Texas guy accent. And that's okay, that's sorry. But first before we do that, I'm going to give the Florida
ed for a minute. Let me bring them on here real quick, and I want to choose which. Yeah, we're going to go to that one right there. Good evening to you both. What's up, guys, Hey, how's it going on?
Jason?
Oh? It is it is a you know, the weather out here has been freaking extraordinary for the last couple of weeks. It was like in the forties the last two or three mornings, and it's been in the like mid seventies to low eighties for the last two or three weeks, and I'm just loving it. I'm like, I wish it would. Our fall lasts about three weeks, so I wish it would last the whole three months, but it doesn't. But that's where we are today. So what's going on with you guys?
Same old garbage, join the beautiful weather. We're having a resurgence of late spring early summer here as well.
Okay, okay, well.
Yeah, I think it got up to about seventy five today.
Oh wow, Yeah, you guys are breaking up the swim trunks. I bet.
So.
Yeah good Okay, So, Ed, I know you want to talk. Ed is running for division director? Is that correct?
Hudson Division Director?
Hudson Division Director.
I'm the currently appointed Hudson Division Director.
Okay.
We're in the middle of an election right now, Okay. I wanted to give a shout out to everybody from the Hudson Division that's been out there and giving me lots of support, lots of help, and also giving me a hand helping out the the high school kids' St. Aland Technical High School. So a shout out over there to Katie two z z t Everton. He's the he's
their teacher. We've licensed one hundred and ten students wow at that school in the last year, and we plan on licensing about another one hundred and fifty more, probably by January. So Everton is a graduate of the Teachers Institute of Wireless Technology from the ABRL, and he's one of the two model schools that the ABRL has adopted, so myself in Good Game. We go down there quite often. We're hanging out with the kids. We're showing them a few things, they're teaching us a couple of things, so
it's a lot of fun. We were down there a couple of weeks ago and they had me in Good Game. It happened to be their club day, so they were recruiting for their hamm radio club and they had me in Good Game at the table talking about ham radios. Kind of interesting with the high school kids, but good. Yeah, Teachers Institute, really really great program. I think there's going to be an upcot mean telethon coming up somewhere around Thanksgiving.
Oh good, okay, good.
So I think Josh is going to be handling that, so okay. Well help And just a shout out to my Eastern New York, New York City, Long Island sections, and a big shout out to northern New Jersey. Thank you very much for the overwhelming support you guys have been showing me in the last few weeks in regards to this election.
Totally well, good luck to you. How many do you have one person running against you or two or how many is that working?
Just one opponent here. Okay, just one opponent in here, but one more thing and then I'll turn it back over to Steve. I just want to ahead let all of our EWRIL members know that you need to demand and deserve a director that's going to go out there and get their hands dirty. My opponents said recently that directors don't get their hands dirty. That's a bunch of bull crap.
I've heard. I've heard section managers and division directors both say that once you get elected actually doing ham radio. And the guy who the guy who's my section manager, absolutely does not do that. He's got a really great competition station with two or three flex radios and he does a lot of competitions. You see his call signed through on hammlert all the time. So yeah, he's like, that's not gonna happen to me if I get elected, And sure enough he's he's he's on the air quite
a bit. But I've heard that before, so yeah, about your hands getting dirty and about not being on the air. So yeah, you want someone that does that for sure. So well, good luck to you, man. I hope it goes well for.
You, Thank you very much.
Yep. All right, so we're gonna talk about what are we talking about seventeen? I'm going to talk about this. In fact, let me switch over here to this guy right here. Okay, yeah, that's right. Okay. So this is my Yeah, this is my CS seven seventeen. This top channel selector knob doesn't seem to do anything.
Not yet. Uh it'll it'll adjust the frequency a bit.
Will it. Okay, See it's not anything on the screen.
Well, maybe they did, maybe they changed something.
Maybe it's different. So there's a there's a there's a there's two different radios on the Connect System's website, the c c CS seven thousand, M seventeen and the C seven seventeen plus. And I went and ordered the M seventeen plus, which they claim will do M seventeen, DMR and analog all at the same time. You just program your channels. Didn't go well, Apparently the firmware is not
ready for that one yet. So I contacted Connect Systems and I'm like, send me the one that that actually is ready to go for M seventeen, and he traded the order. It was no big deal, but just be aware of that if you're going to order one of these radios. And I put a link in the description blowout. I can share it here in a minute. But this is correct me if I'm wrong. This is the only one that actually has M seventeen in it right now
from Connect Systems, and yes it is. It is. I thought this was going to be like a copy of one of their previous radios, or maybe a T what look looked like a ty T radio. This is a brand new design. I really like the design. It's it's very solid feeling. It's got a recessed button over here, much like you'd see on like a Motorola type HT. It's got the blade connector over here on the side for programming, and they sent me it came with a programming cable. It's got a really nice looking screen as.
Well, got some nice way to it. It's very sturdy.
Yes, yeah, yeah it is. It's very sturdy. So I'm pretty happy with the I haven't heard it yet, I haven't actually used it yet. I took it out of the box earlier today make sure it was charged up and flashed and everything, and Steve said they're coming flashed with M seventeen firmware now, so yep, zoom in on that a little bit.
But what is this M seventeen were speaking about?
Oh yeah, we're okay. Yeah, I was gonna tell I was gonna let you guys give us a spiel on that real quick. So let's talk about M seventeen real quick. Yeah, all right.
So M seventeen first started out as a project by
voy check katch Marski SP five WWP in Poland. He was experimenting with other digital radio modes DMR tetra, There's a couple others that he was messing around with, but his radio club that he was part of was really you know, interested in working on digital modes, and every single one of them that he came across did not fit the bill for amateur radio as far as he was concerned, and so he decided, well, let's just go ahead and make our own, and so M seventeen was born.
A lot of people always ask, you know what with the M seventeen you know name, and it has nothing to do with the pistol at all, as much as I want it to be.
Yeah, do purpose pistol plus radio? There you go. We've got an android radio. We need a pistol radio now, So yeah, that'd be great. Okay, all right, go ahead.
But no, it comes from the address of the radio club in Poland. I'm not even gonna bother trying to pronounce the name of it, but basically it starts with the letter M and the actual building number seventeen, so it comes out M seventeen. That's what they named it for.
Okay, Okay, I don't think I ever knew that. Okay, well, yeah, you know, I.
Just do a presentation for a local club, so I had to put all this information in so it's still pretty fresh in my mind. But M seventeen is a digital radio mode. It is does digital data and digital voice. I mean obviously digital voices, digital data regardless, you know. So ever, it's all digital data. Is just that one is a stream mode, the other one's a packet mode. It uses the codec to voice codec, which is an open source voice vocoder from Dave Roe. I forget his
call sign. I keep forgetting his call sign, but he's down in Australia. He did his you know thesis on it, and it's actually used widely for free DV. So if you've ever used free DV on HF, it's the same voice codec. It's just at a higher bit rate for vhfing up. When you're talking about M seventeen. M seventeen does digital voice, of course, but it's also digital data. We're starting to really dig into the digital data side
of it. So all the packet radio stuff, SMS, messaging, basically anything that you can think of that would need some sort of digital mode is possible through M seventeen. And one of the things I like to point out is you can use M seventeen on some TNCs that are currently available, such as the Mobile Linked TNC. The TNC three has it, the TNC four has it as a mode that you can use. You just need a ninety six hundred BOD capable radio for that TNC to
work with the M seventeen digital mode. And basically any kiss mode application that you can think of will be able to use M seventeen as it's RF protocol. So things like Windlink has a pack at TNC mode, so you could use M seventeen instead of having to you know, pay for a viral license or you know, get a packtor modem, you could use M seventeen instead. I mean, granted, is VHF and up, but still, you know, it's it's
a decent fast mode for a packet radio. But it's been in development since twenty nineteen and here we are now twenty twenty four. We actually have HTS with the seventeen protocol now being built into it. So I've come quite a long ways in the past five years.
Totally good, Okay, So I actually got that. Yeah, the last time I had you guys on the streamy all were talking about that seventeen module from I think it's Lilygo that goes on the back of the the FtM six thousand, YESU radio, and I got that, and then I never got you guys back on the stream. I never did anything with it. So I've still got that somewhere. We needed to do that. One of these days. You need to te him up with t o uh okay, yeah, yeah,
that's right. He has done that. That's right. That's right. Yeah, maybe maybe I will do that. Okay, good deal. Okay, Well, thank you, Steve. That's that's that's good information. So yeah, okay, let's see. Let me make sure that that is make sure that's that's yeah, that's better.
It's a VK five DGR.
Oh that's dav roh Yeah, okay, d DGR yep. Okay, okay, cool, great, okay, So this guy right here, let me make sure. Oh no, I'm trying to get my Oh there we go. Okay, that's better, trying to get my Make sure it's that you guys aren't washed out on the background. Uh So this guy right here, we can we can switch back over here.
Uh.
This this is my Bridgecom Skybridge plus hot spot. And I had ed Steve and Chip on a while back and we discussed the WPSD operating System slash application whichever one it is for for hotspots. That's kind of like an upgrade to pie Star and it comes with seventeen built in. In fact, let me let me switch over to this right here, and this is my dashboard for the hot spot that's running right now. And you see we've got it set up from DMR. This is just
the last thing I used it on. It's on four to thirty three four fifty, but it's got M seventeen over on the side over here, an M seventeen net on the network status on the mode status. So we're gonna switch that here in just a minute. But Steve, i'd like you to take us through what to do. This is a fresh out of the box radio and
it's already flashed for M seventeen. You can see right hopefully that focuses there we go M seventeen pound sign all or hashtag all, whatever you want to say with that, and do you have to I guess my my my main question when I first pulled it out is they have they have a CPS on the Connect System's website that says it's for DMR because you can flash this with a DMR firmware and it'll do DMR and analog, or you can flash it with an M seventeen firmware,
and I guess it just does the digital, it doesn't do analog. Is that correct?
Or so I'll be honest with you, I have not messed with anything regarding DMR on this radio. The if you if your program channels on through the CPS on that radio, it's only going to work for DMR. It's not going to show up in them seventeen side. So right now it's just manual VFO programming.
But will it do analog? And so you're if you're on, if you have it flashed with them seventeen firmware, will it also do analog?
Yes? Oh, it will okay, yes, yes, I think I don't want to speak out of turn here, but I think the CTCSS is also working on that, so you should be able to at least activate a repeater using the radio in analog as well.
So okay, okay, that's good. That's good, because that it was it was a little bit I don't want to call it misleading, but it was a little bit ambiguous on the Connect System's website because it sounded like you flashed it with DMR and you get analog. You flash it with them seventeen and you get seventeen.
So if you actually hold the side top button.
Side top button, this one above the PTT, yeah.
So there and hold it, I'll lock the macro menu open and if you push the number five, it will switch you into analog.
Ah, there it is. Yeah, and there's a CTCSS the top one. Yep, okay, excellent.
Yeah, and then just pressing five again, we'll put you back in them seventeen. And to close the menu can either well I think you have to push the button again, the top button.
Yeah, okay, yeah, we're back to the VFO screen there, okay, good, excellent, okay, all right, So, uh so, let's set up seventeen. Well, let's set it up on the hot spot first so that we can see this right here.
M H.
And I'm gonna go in. I got a lot. I don't think I've even logged into this yet, so let me see pie store. This is a very secure pie store in Raspberry is the password.
Don't give out your password.
I gave out chips password. Actually, So we're gonna go over here to I think it's uh whereas oh configuration, that's it. Yep, all right, So we're gonna go on here, and I'm going to turn DMR off and turn M seventeen on, and then I'm going to apply changes. Now, explain real quick one of you, if y'all don't mind M seventeen use it. What do you call the talk groups, reflectors, talk groups, yaser system, frusion rooms? What does M seventeen cause call their their rooms or whatever.
So, if you're familiar with d star and reflectors, and you know you get different modules on reflectors, M seventeen is modeled after that same system it uses. So the M seventeen reflector system is a subset of XLX, which is again a subset of D STAR reflector systems. M
seventeen reflectors have twenty six modules. We call them modules, so it goes through A through Z. So each M seventeen reflector can have twenty six different concurrent channels and they don't talk to each other, but you can have different channels set for different things on a single reflector.
So like a d star has like two Alpha two, Bravo two, Charlie two Delta and all that. That's what you're talking about with modules.
Yep, yep. So in M seventeen it will be M seventeen DASH reflector designator and then module letter. So for example, the one that we use here for M seventeen is obviously M seventeen DASH M seventeen, and then the popular module that we use is Charlie.
M seventeen and seventeen Charlie. Okay, yep.
And as a matter of fact, in WPSD, that is the default reflector that you are connected to. Okay, as soon as you connect up.
Yeap, gotcha? Okay, Yeah, so that's what we're seting. That's what I'm seeing right here on the screen is yeah, it came up. All I did was turn M seventeen on, and if you guys looked. When I went back to the dashboard, they were red. It took I don't know, five or ten seconds and both of them connected. So now they're both the network status and the module status are both green. And yeah, we've got M seventeen and there's a bunch of them in.
Here, and eight as of the last count that we have.
Okay, and then with all of those you can go a through Z. I guess you said twenty six, right, that makes sense? Okay, Okay, Well that's quite a bit of rooms and reflectors or whatever you want to call it. So okay. The call sign suffix is just like if I have multiple hot spots connected exactly, okay, okay, makes sense, station I.
D think of that as an SSID. It's just an additional identifier for your call sign.
Okay. And then seventeen can C a N YEP.
That's a channel access number. You can think of it like a CTCSS okay for repeaters.
Gotcha, Okay, So we don't need that for a hotspot necessarily.
If you had multiple hot spots using similar frequencies in an area, then yes, you would change the CAN for you know, you would have this this hot spot on can zero this spot hot spot on can one. You can have them set to different reflectors and everything.
Okay, okay, good, okay, So I'm okay, so I didn't change anything there. I'm gonna go back to the dashboard. Actually, I think, yeah, so pair of the dashboard, it shows me four three three dot four five is the is my frequency. I'm in simplex mode, so it's uh, there's no offset. Uh let's see all that's that gives me skybridge firmer. Okay, So that's what we're gonna do there.
And now I'm gonna go back over here, and I've got it on speaker presentation on zoom, so ed when you start talking, it'll switch back to you.
Just f y.
I didn't. I didn't hide you on purpose. David wants to know what whiskey I'm drinking. This is just t X bourbon. See there you go, big fancy ice cube in the middle there.
So t X stands for Texas, Steve, That's that's where it's made, Texas.
Where is Texas.
It's a place where we know how to pronounce the word car correctly.
Of a coffee off.
Yeah yeah, cool, fee.
I keep telling the story about how I had to drive from East Texas all the way over to El Pasa. So I went from Louisiana all the way to l Passo. It took two and a half days. I couldn't believe it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bob used to get Bob used to get our funder. Bob used to give DMR presentations or help me with my DMR presentations, and I would I would talk to him about how the way he pronounces talk group, Like, what the hell is a talk group? So yeah, yeah, yeah, it's about uh, it's probably about uh louis you said street, So that's Streeport from s Freeport's El Paso is probably fifteen sixteen hours with no stops.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had my mother with me, so I had to stop every eight hours and yeah.
Yeah, okay, all right, all right for eight hours.
Yeah, we traded off. I'd drive four and she'd drive four.
Oh well, okay, well that's better than driving the whole way yourself, I guess. But yeah, okay, all right, So I'm gonna go up here and I'm gonna put this four four three four fifty No, it's four three three.
So yeah, okay, okay, So four three three four five zero h and for some reason, you know, it asks for you know, resolution to the to the fourth digit after the decimal.
So right, yeah, I noticed that.
The quick way to get around it is that if there's a zero in that spot, you can just hit okay and it'll switch to the next KA field okay, and then you can just hit okay again if it's simplex.
Right yeah, yeah, because it asks you to sit the trans which is easy if you're gonna if you're gonna eventually use an M seventeen repeater, that'd be an easy way to do it. Just set the transmit as a plus or minus five offset for UHF good. Right, okay, so we're on four three three four fifty now okay, so what okay, So I want to and somebody k C eight pff just keyed up, Chris, And I'm looking at that on my dashboard here to the M to
my hot spot. Okay, oh yeah, he just keyed up, and so I would hopefully but hear them here in a minute. But what do I need to do? What's the next step on the radio?
Do you have your call sign programmed into it?
I did do that, actually, yes, I was just kind of poking around through the menu and like, oh it says call sign and it was set to like I don't know zero's or something, but yes, I did do that.
Yeah, okay, Yeah, that's the most important part is that you got to put your call sign in just like any other digital mode. The only one that's an exception is DMR you use a radio ID. But right, that's one of the features that I'm seventeen is that you don't need to sign up for an ID or anything like that. Your call sign is your identifier and there's no currently there is no system to deny access for anybody,
so it's a it's an open system. So as long as you have a valid call sign here, it will pass through a reflector without any issue.
Okay, yeah, so okay, so here's I couldn't remember how I get there, but here we do. So if we had hit the OK button on this radio and I can hear people chunk in the system, yep. We go down to settings and we go to seventeen and the three options are call sign, can and can RX check.
Yeah. Can our X check is a promiscuous mood. So if you don't know the can that a repeater or another radio is using. You turn that on and it will tell you which channel access number is in use.
Okay, that's good. This is more like a If the CAN is just like a CTSSAS scanner, then pretty much. So yeah, okay, all right, good, okay. So yeah, so I have my call sign in and people are people are ker chunking the system. I assume that they're gonna wait for me to I assume these are people that are watching this live.
I'd assume. So, I don't know. The reflectors had some some pretty good activity over the past couple of days because of Pacific on.
Oh okay, did you guys do a presentation there or something?
I unfortunately was unable to make it out there this year, but Jonathan G four kl X he was out there with Jim from some radio Zoom Radio.
Oh yeah, Jonathan Taylor, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, okay, good deal, good, okay, cool. So what's next?
Push your PTT and talk.
Okay, So I don't have to do anything on the radio except program to figure it out.
I would be a little bit further away from the hotspot so than not overloading the front end.
But well, yeah, and I can do that. My point is that that programming was awfully fast.
Uh yeah, I mean it's as simple as possible that you can make it, aside from setting channels that you know, that's the only limitation that we currently have is that we can't create channels on the radio just yet. But you know, as long as you know the frequency that you're repeater or hotspot or on, it's just a matter of putting in your call signs set in the can and putting the frequency in.
So we can't save this. So this is a VFO right here that I can change by just pushing up and down on the button. But I can't save this as a channel in the radio, not yet.
Okay, at least I haven't been able to figure it out.
Rus. I'm sorry I say that again.
I said. The firmware is a work in progress, right right open open RTX is working on the firmware and they're opciating it as quick quick as they can.
Okay, okay, well, no problem, Hey, it's working. That's you know. The last time I was I had you guys on the show. We were talking about who was going to be the first uh ht, and y'all talked about that icon that you can buy and sort of hack up or something.
Yep.
And then there was a guy that was taking the some of the T Y T radios and he was making physical hardware changes to it, and I tried to buy one of those, and I think he got overwhelmed. He ended up refunding my money. He's like, I can't keep up with the man. So oh yeah, yeah, so but this, so this is the actual first RF producing radio that I've had that'll do M seventeen.
Yes, the first first Yeah, I guess you could say official, the first official commercial off the shelf radio that you can buy with them seventeen. Yeah.
Now, now if I wanted to do well, is there let me put me, let me word it this way. Is there an official simplex UH what'd you call? Module? And you know, if if you and I were at a Hamfest together and we we didn't we didn't have a hot spot or didn't want to use it, is there an official simplex frequency or module that we would that we would talk.
On for Region two that it's the same digital UH frequency that is you know, in use for d M R D STAR. Basically any simplex digital voice mode Region one does have a specific UH frequency. I don't know what it is off the top of my head. I think it's somewhere on the four thirty three range. But here in the States it's the same you know, digital frequency that everybody else uses for simplex.
But what module would we use? Because if I'm on one module you're on the other, we will be able to talk, right.
No, no, no, you can go direct to another HD without needing the Internet or anything like that.
No, I understand that. So but okay, so okay, let mean I'm I'm talking to you with DMR knowledge here. Okay, So if you set set up a DMR radio on a specific timeslot and talk group on simplex like Taley nine is the simplex Talk Group nine is usually local repeater. So but if I'm on Talk Group ninety nine and you're on talk Group three one four eight, even though we're on a simplex frequency with no offset, we wouldn't be able to hear each other.
So so turn the screen back on on your radio.
Okay, sure, okay, you see how.
It says I hate using the term hashtag, but it says hashtag all right, yes, correct? That is that is your broadcast. And I say that with air quotes broadcast destination. So what you're what you're seeing on the radio right now is M seventeen is the mode and then hashtag all is the destination.
Okay.
So what you're doing is you're you're transmitting your call to any radio that is willing to receive it. So there is no there's no real idea of talk group or module or anything. When you're doing simplex. It's basically you either have the ALL destination or a specific call sign or a specific target such as a reflector.
Okay, So if I was to go, so I can do direct to your call sign if you and I were standing near one another.
Hypothetically, Yes, I have not tested this because I only have one of these radios.
Okay, okay, okay, all right, So we would just need to figure out in the software how to change that all to something else.
So if you actually push the pound button or the yeah pound button, that's how it can change your destination. And it's T nine text input, just like an old cell phone. So you could put in I see you know z XQ and then you just press the OK button and that locks it in and to reset it, you just push the pound key twice.
Ah, Okay, So if I just want it, so, I could I put M seventeen in there, so I'm just transmitting on the M seventeen module and it would still work in a hot spot.
So your hot spot will take the all and send it through to the reflector by being connected to a reflector, so you don't have to do anything on the radiant.
Thing, right, Okay, okay, okay, okay, all right, we'll get to so. Okay, So in theory, I could either call your call sign if we're close enough together, or we could just choose a reflector to meet on and we could do pound one two three, and as long as we're both on pound one two three, we could hear each other. If I'm understanding you correctly, that's that's what I'm trying to do.
Uh.
So the destination would have to be an actual valid target, meaning that it would have to be a valid call sign or valid reflector that you want to talk to through your hot spot. If you're going simplex, then you would want to put in somebody's call sign or you know, you would put in someone's call sign or a reflector that you want to talk to. So if you actually since you're connected to M seventeen dash M seventeen Charlie.
You could type in M seventeen dash one two three space A and then your reflector, I mean, your hotspot would automatically switch over to that reflector and then you would just you know, either remain on that or push the pound sign twice get back to all and then
you're be talking on that new reflector. But if you're if you're going simplex, you would need to have a valid target to talk to, so it would have to be somebody else's call sign or radio setup with a different target altogether, So it would have to be you know, you would have to know that that person's call sign in advance.
Right, yeah, yeah, okay, okay, all right, okay, that makes sense. That makes sense, okay, okay, good. It was so in five RFX just keyed up and I was hearing him. So let me, I'm gonna throw my callsign out here and see what happened. So maybe that a little bit away.
Hopefully my repeater is working.
Uh k C five HWB Great Bound Texas testing one two three four five.
I think we heard you through Ed's all Star.
This is Mark in five RFX.
Okay, that was Mark in five r and that's really clean audio. That's really clean audio. Let me switch over to this real quick. Okay, Mark, good evening in five rfs from k C five hw B sounding good out here?
Man, good. Yeah, I've been on seventeen the Hour for about for a while now, and.
So I am interested in getting my my Connect Systems Radio. I've been waiting a very long time for.
Okay, he's in Flower Mountain's like two towns away from me.
Connect Systems Radio. I pre ordered mine a long time ago, so I am really interested in getting it. I'm anxious.
So hopefully i'll get it next month, well hope.
So I just, uh, I just got an email. I've been on Jerry's uh email list for a long long time, and I just got an email from him like two weeks ago something like that, and I just ordered one. So I just I don't know. I don't know how he's shipping out orders in order or not. I don't say anything. I mean, he didn't know. I didn't ask him for one. I was just like, hey, I'm just going to order one, and I just ordered it. I don't even know if he realized it was going on the air. Or not.
But he had a handful of them up at Pacific on too, so did he.
Okay, yeah, all right, so maybe plus version?
Oh oh they ordered the plus version. Okay, so yeah, I was. I was told that that one would take longer. Okay, Mark, good deal, that thanks man, I appreciate it. Yeah, this is the non plus version that I got. I wanted the plus version, but since it wasn't ready yet, I switched it. So good to hear you, man, The audio on this sounds terrific. That's yeah, that's the difference is
the plus version. I'll probably grab one of those when they're ready as well, because it'll do everything so well that I mean, that's that's awfully simple to set up and go.
I mean it almost seems dangerously simple.
Yes, it really does. It really does. So you've got, uh, you've got twenty six different modules inside of how many different reflectors did you say there were?
There is two hundred and eight. I'll send you a link for the hold on my droid star is acting up?
Oh that's fine.
I'll send you a link here for the the reflector page and you can look up all the reflectors that are available.
Okay, Uh, Steve does a does a question in the chat? Did you create an ad hoc private simplex group for an event.
In the sense that it would be as private as an analog channel in use? Yes, you know, just pick a frequency and go direct, you know, uh, using M seventeen rather than anything else. There's there's no I mean, you could, you could switch the channel access number, you know, kind of give yourself the CTCSS like functionality. But as far as having something private, obviously that's outside the scope of amateur radio, you know, it would it would have to be a channel in use, you know, specific for
whatever event that you're doing. But yeah, I mean you could to make it a whole lot simpler. You could put a reflector on a Raspberry Pie and connect that up with a radio or you're connected up with I'm sorry not a radio connect HOWK spots into it, or you know, something like that, and just basically have your own reflector. But again, as if you're using RF, it's not going to be private unless you set something like
the channel access number. But even then it's you know, no more private than an analog channel with CTCSS, right.
Yeah, I've often told people they should get on two twenty or six meter FM simplex add to him Fest because nobody else is there. I mean you could almost you could almost have a private channel that way. You know, it's totally open, but you know anybody can do it, but nobody uses it. So yeah, in that regard, I can see what you're saying. Okay, good, Yeah, I forgot to say in the beginning, we don't have Frank tonight. He's at a family event. So thank you for watching
the chat. Ed appreciate that. So if you guys have any question, Okay, was that Allen's Frank? Yeah, it is the new Frank. Yeah, I guess yeah, well.
That question was from gray Man Poda, but.
Uh oh okay, that was Tim.
Yeah, okay, So Alan has a question in regards to the module one one point. Oh yeah, I have been. I've been very substitute. List of parts. I guess JLCPCB has a shortage of some of the parts, so.
The best option is to wait for those parts to come in or order the parts from somewhere else and jail source the parts from somewhere else such as Mauser or Digitkei or something like that, and JLCPCB will take those parts or they can order them on your behalf.
I don't suggest replacing parts with equivalents unless you understand that this is an RF device and there's a bunch of timing that has to be considered, such as, you know, the crystals, the actual stability of the crystals, the tolerances on all the parts, et cetera. Were picked specifically for this module. So swapping out the parts, sure, you can do it if you can find a an equivalent with
the same tolerance and and rating, but I would wait. Unfortunately, a lot of the issues that we've run into are for op amps and digital potentiometers, so the one point zero module has an option for both. You can either use a multi turn potentiometer or digital potentiometer, one or the other. So if you can't find the digital ones, use the analog ones. If you can't find the analog ones,
use the digital ones. I have to say that I'm sorry, I don't have an alternative to talk about, because again, the parts were picked and engineered for specifically their use, So swapping them out, you do it your own risk. Source them elsewhere. It might be a little bit more expensive. Hopefully another manufacturer will take on the new one point zero version. For us such as Lilygo when they did it with the zero point one module. But I don't.
I don't have any information on whether or not they're going to So you know, I mean take it all with a grain of salt, you do you? I mean, it is an open source project. If you do find an alternative, you can go ahead and pull it. Put a pull request in for the for the repository, and we can add it in as an alternative if it works.
Good, Okay, good info. Uh ed A C three A A C three, I K very very loyal follower, and UH attends every live stream that I do. Why is there a D after some of the call signs? He's just curious.
So D stands for Originally it originally stood for dongle back when d star was starting to get those dongles, since it was Alpha Bravo Charlie for you know, the different types of frequency that you could get onto a p her and and link up with. Uh D was kind of used as a dongle user. So when you had like, uh, the DV dongle or those those old geez what the d V, I forget the name of it, but the little red and blue DV dongle things that you could plug into a computer. It had no Yeah, it was.
Like Northwest Digital had one.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, So D kind of stood for dongle to let you know that it was a dongle user. It could also mean D for droid Star if somebody's using droid star. Okay, but the suffix after the call sign, it's it's a purely vanity thing. Yeah, it actually has one in his hand right there, Yeah, the old d star Yeah, dongle, Yeah, access point, DVAPP, DVAP.
Yes, DVAP yeah, put that up there in front of the camera again, Ed, Yeah, there we go. Okay cool.
Yeah, so back then it used to mean dongle for dongle user. It has a more color for term internally to the to the project, but it's not appropriate. But needless to say, it's probably somebody not using r F.
Okay, okay, somebody coming in through. Uh well, like Ed did that? Uh where was that? Tapper or Ham said that you guys were at a couple years ago where he was running the net through a through a computer system through through that.
Uh although the Raspberry Pie four.
Right, the Pie four hundred. Yeah, yeah, because you didn't have r F at the time, so because it wouldn't available. Cool, okay, yeah, that makes sense. M voice, M voice, that was it? Yeah, the voice yeah on on Rasby and or Linux whenever it was Okay, good, okay, uh let's see I well w X five o U says we have an M seventeen repeater right across the street from the Green County ham Fest building. Which that's that might be fun. Greek County Hamfest is the large hamfest in the state of Oklahoma.
It happens in a little town called Claremore outside of Tulsa, and I believe it's in April. I've been to it a couple times. This is a good show. I didn't make it this year, but prep Pam, Paul, thank you for the gift of membership.
So Jason, our friends down at Plahoma. There they run a M seventeen net every Saturday afternoon. I think one pm.
Your time, different than your net.
Yeah, they have a Saturkay, okay, okay, lots of M seventeen usage there in Oklahoma.
Good. I wasn't aware there were any actual repeaters up yet, but apparently that's well. I mean, it makes sense now that ws WPSD supports it so easily. That makes sense that people are putting repeaters up. I guess I didn't really think about that, but that's a good point.
If you check repeater book, I think there's forty two current M seventeen repeaters listed. Okay, most of them are in Europe. There's a handful in the US.
I am. I am in the process. And when I say I'm in the process, what I actually mean is it's in the back of my mind. So I haven't actually started anything yet of building a mobile ham shack. And when I when I do this, I was going through kind of a list of what I'm going to put in when I got the idea from Bill k Zero WHW. He's a hand radio tectonics And I have this bridge coom repeater that has a pie star on the back of it. And my my HB link server failed on me, like I don't know, a couple three
months ago something like that. That's just the the software just kind of food barred in which it you know, okay, whatever, it just I needed to update it probably, but rather than messing with that, because I didn't really get on that much anymore anyway, to connect it to h I was coul connected to DMR. I was thinking about making an all Star repeater out of it, which I probably will do. Actually, I'm going to put this in my mobile hamshack. I got a hundred a hundred amp repeater
amplifier to it. Don't tell anybody, but uh yeah, so, but I'm I'm probably so, I'm probably gonna run a mobile All Star repeater, but I could it could totally be dual purpose and dual use and run M seventeen as well, So it would be it would be fun to do that. I think it'd be really fun to do that.
So they steeve. The new Hampshire repeater is bridge Comm right.
Yeah, the one that I have here at the lab is a bridge Comm. It was a DMR repeater. It's now a multi mode repeater because if you buy a bridge COMMB digital DMR repeater, it is WPSD that's installed on it, right, so you can run any digital mode on it. Correct, It's just out of the box that's set up for DMR.
It's actually an analog repeater with a with a yeah what used to be pie Star, but WPSD attached to that. It's got A. It's got a very easy port interface in the back, so it's easy to set up all Star analog on that repeater as well. Those repeaters are very versatile. Yeah, so I wish mine was two twenty. Mine's four forty. I would like to I would like to have a two twenty repeater instead, But I really it's a great repeater. I've had really good luck with mine.
I just run mine at low power and it works great. So yeah, good, okay, okay, so that might be a thing coming up. All right, So Alan asked a question in the parts in parts list, can switches be individually placed on file when removing? For HMI, then cannot select to have JLCPCB solder on, I don't understand what he's asking, but maybe you do.
I think he's asking if we can omit the switches if you're using the HMI board. So there's two boards on the Module seventeen version one point oh, it's classically still the same that you would have for the version zero point one. It still has the switches and a place for the screen and everything like that. But when you have the Module one point oh, you can also put another board on top of the board that exists for the r F side, well, I say the R
side the BASEBAN side. It's basically just got a slightly larger screen and a capacitive touchpad instead of the switches, so you have the option of running it either with or without the HMI board, and if you order the board. I think by default the switches do come installed and soldered on, but if you tell JLCPCB to admit them,
they should be able to. There is no real reason to have those switches on there if you're going to use the HMI board, But if you're not, then obviously having the switches on would would help out, you know, because you would need some sort of input interface. Anyway. I don't know if you can tell JLCPCB to directly take them off the bomb or if they come back at you when you tell them to omit them, then just tell them. Look, I don't need those switches. I
can saw them on myself if I have them. They're just tactile button switches, They're nothing special. Those parts could probably be swapped out if you need to. If you don't need them, then I think they can be omitted. I just haven't done that personally through JLCPCB. I just had them ordered and made as they were out of the out of the bomb bomb as in bill of materials, not.
Like it's the bomb. Uh okay, okay, WX five ou Oklahoma, M seventeen net is on Saturdays twelve noon, which that's going to be Central time, so UTC minus five currently until the time changes again on M seventeen dash oko alpha.
Yes. So I've been on it a couple of times. Okay, great set of people out there.
I will I will put that on my Google calendar so I'll remember it and that'll be a fun thing to check into now that I can. So yeah, yeah, good deal. Okay. I mean, I you know, I I've used invoice a couple of times. But I just like this is ham Radio. I like the idea of having an RF access to something because I love I love it when I it's a love hate thing. I love it when I get the comments on any of my videos that talk about how DMR is not real because
it requires Internet. No it doesn't, uh yasus its confusion, Well, it requires how how are you guys? How are you digital? Guy who's going to communicate when emergency hurricane comes through? I'm like through simplex the way you do with any other freaking radio in the world. So people don't get that, and that's okay, that's part. But I mean, I feel like I've said it till I'm blue in the face,
and I am. I'm happy for people to ask questions, but when you come by and make accusations while having your head up your ass, that's a different thing than than asking a question. So that's that's my personal opinion. May you might Yeah, yeah, Sada is a so uh now, this is a good question. So Life and Death that's his YouTube name. He's been on the in the chat a lot as well. Life in This is a good question, Okay, queue me in. With so many digital modes, is M
seventeen better sound quality? Is it higher compression? What does M seventeen do to justify another digital mode? I have my own opinion about that question. Yeah, oh, I thought you might. I thought you might, So you go right ahead, Steve, go ahead.
So a lot of people will ask this based on you know, why why should we use M seventeen? Is it better quality audio? That's subjective to me.
I just listened to it for about a minute and a half, and I think that it is to me sore more testing is required.
I personally find the code of the voice codec to be easier to understand. With D star you get a lot of what they call that R two D two. When you get on the fringes of you know, the frequency or the I'm sorry, the edge of the repeater kind of thing, it kind of falls off. You get
R two D two DMR. If you've ever listened to Public safety on DMR through a scanner or anything like that, it is damn near impossible to understand half the things that they're saying because either they're whispering into the mic or they're got the micro or whatever. I mean, yeah, sure, that's probably operating etiquette that's causing those problems. But the voice codec is not really to my ear, it doesn't
sound good. CODEC two has a bit more fidelity as far as you know, Voice check likes to use the word sibilance, so those sounds and everything like that they come out a little bit clearer. So as far as the voice codec is concerned, it is subjective. Personally, I find it a whole lot better. But the reason, the real reason that M seventeen exists is because It is an amateur radio digital mode created by amateur radio for amateur radio. It is not a commercial entity creating a
digital mode. It is not a commercial digital mode that's being shoehorned into MS to amateur radio. M seventeen is completely open source and it is designed for amateur radio, and it's designed for people to hack and modify and make better rather than wait for some commercial entity to put in the features that you want or be laid into a commercial protocol that is not designed for amateur radio.
DMR was never designed for amateur radio. It was designed as a commercial radio public safety radio by the European Telecommunications at C. At the was designed, you know, it was an APCO protocol that was developed for public safety. NXDN was commercial radio protocol. M seventeen is a radio protocol that is design buy and for amateur radio, open source, to be hacked, to be modified, to be made better by people in amateur radio. People will argue that system
fusion is an amateur radio protocol. It isn't. It's C four FM. It's P twenty five. It has just been modified for use in amateur radio, and it is designed and developed by Yasu. You are locked into Yasu by buying you know, to use that protocol, you have to buy a Yasu radio. You have to buy a Yasu repeater in order for it to be effective. M seventeen. You could build this radio protocol into any radio that will accept it, or even design your own radio to
use the M seventeen protocol. This is why we have a commercial radio that has M seventeen built into it. Because a commercial radio manufacturer was saying, hey, we need a new protocol, we need something new. They built M seventeen in there. There's no licensing that's required other than the open source licensing. There is no cost to somebody
building in our protocol into their equipment. So that's the most attractive part, the most attractive part for people that want to sell something without having to buy a license with DMR, with fusion, with well probably not d star anymore, but with NXDN and P twenty five Tier two you have to buy a license from DVSI in order to use their voice codec. People will say, oh, well, patent's expiring. Well, the patent hasn't expired, as a matter of fact, has been extended until November.
Six.
I think something like that and the newest d Star radios are using MB three thousand, right, the D seventy five is using AMB three thousand, so.
But it's still using the old imb ambras plus that's why it doesn't That wasn't That's why it doesn't sound as good.
But yes, yeah, you're right. And that was a d DVSI product as well.
Yep.
So everything every every digital voice mode we have seen so far, except for maybe NXD in I'm not one hundred percent certain on NXD.
Know they use MB two plus, okay, plus.
So it's all been dvs I licensed, which is a commercial company and licensing structure. So yeah, okay.
And and even though people are saying, you know, the patent's gonna expire, that doesn't mean the copyright expires. The copyright still exists on the code for dvs i's voice codec. Unless somebody writes an open source version of that voice codec after the patent expires, you're still latent to the copyright by dvs I, and they can sell that however they want. So yeah, it's it's the The thing that I like to drive home so much is that M seventeen is open source. It is buy hams four hams
b HF FH. Remember then this is but but Ham Ham Radio by Ham radio only Ham's what anyway? So yeah, it's uh, it's definitely an amateur radio protocol designed by amateur radio. And then that's the driving force behind us, is that we want to make sure that everything is still bringing that idea of build it yourself and do it yourself that amateur radio was based on. You know, back in the fifties and sixties when amateur radio was
getting sadded, everybody was building their own radios. You'd go out by a helicrafters you know, can't build it get on the air, or you build your own radio out of tubes and wire. You know, we're bringing that back when we don't want to be burdened by having to purchase a radio that's made commercially with a commercial protocol
in it. You know, we want to be able to have a open source radio with an open source protocol so that an amateur radio can take it apart and I'm sorry, an amateur radio operator can take it apart, modify, put it back together, and be on the merry way with whatever they want. So I'm very passionate about this if you can tell.
No, that's a terrific answer. I love everything you said about that answer. John Nelson in the chats asking what commercial radio exists, I assume you just joined it, so welcome, thank you for joining the live stream. This is a connect system's CS seven thousand, so it's made by a commercial company and commercially for sale for a four by a for profit company. But it contains the M seventeen protocol.
In fact, when before the live stream started, Steve was asking me if I had flashed the M seventeen firmware. And because I just got this radio like four days ago. As soon as I got this radio and the mail, I hit up Ed and Steve and Discord. There's an M seventeen discord. If you guys want to learn more about that, we can share that link here in just
a minute. But I hit them up in Discord. I'm like, I know, I need you guys to come on to the stream whenever you're available, and we're going to talk about this radio and work it through the hot spot. But this is a radio that I purchased that has the M seventeen protocol in it, and it had the firmware flashed to it already when I got it, because Steve said, he goes, oh, it's probably flashed with DMR and I turned around. He goes, nope, you've got to
seventeen right there. I didn't have to do anything. So I opened it out, opened it the box. Charge it was a little bit, the batteries a little bit low. I charge it, turned it on program on hotspot and we were on the air just a few minutes ago. So it's very uh.
In fact, there's okay, Seth, thank you very much.
That's work, and I've received your transformation.
That first guy had a terrible signal, but that last guy had sounded pretty good. So I think I've only been listening into Oh there's ed AC three ik right there. I've only been listening to it for the last forty minutes thirty minutes that we've been doing this, and I can already tell you it sounds fantastic. So I'm gonna have to kind of listen to it over the next few days and kind of monitor some stuff. I'm interested
to see what kind of activity is on there. So yeah, but think you no, John, thank you for joining us. Good question though. So I have a personal pet Peeve, I agree with everything you said. You just said, Steve, I can totally agree with that, Okay. I just I used to get frustrated with people when they said they didn't like DMR because it wasn't made for amateur radio. Oh well, Jesus system, Fusion was made for amature radio.
Dstar was made for amateur radio. I'm like, well, I really really really hope you're not a CW operator because CW and Morse Code were not made for amateur radio. In fact, neither was FM and AM originally, so it just kind of it kind of irks me. I was like, you know what I mean, if if that's your only reason, then seriously, really you're just gonna use fusion and get up all your CWNHF stuff because it wasn't made for
amateur radio. So I don't know, it's just something something I thought of, but no, I liked it, and.
I understand that it's just you know, the the but back when CW was in its heyday, that was the only way of communicating, you know, I didn't have FM and AM. I mean, essentially with CW it is kind of AM but you know, yeah, but you know, until those really came out. You know, CW was the only method of communication, and you know it did to be to be honest, Yeah, Morse code or or CW was originally a commercial thing.
It was, was it?
Uh, Western Union kind of base basically made it like the thing, right, you know, but you know it was adopted by amateur radio. Sure, but.
Well, I mean I used to tell people that, Ye, DMR was made for a commercial world. Hams took it and made it better because we used to have that worldwide net. And DMR was never meant to work across the pond, across the ocean, as a as a North America. It was made for a county or a city to use in a local area for a local radio comms. And it's great because DMR is dual time slot, so you can use you can use two voices, two voice transmissions on the same channel at the same time, same frequency,
the same time. They don't crash into one another. Fusion does that too, except Fusion uses half of its time slot to send GPS data, so you're on a six point twenty five voice channel while GPS data is transmitting on the other six point twenty five data channel. To make up the twelve point five total narrow band channel, or you can switch it to VW for voice wide on Fusion, which takes up the whole twelve and a half narrow band channel. But I mean, so it kind of does the same thing.
Well, I mean M seventeen does it even better?
Okay, explain how that because I don't know how does that work?
Tell me M seventeen is a nine killer Hurts wide channel. It's a M seventeen is FDM, a frequency division multiple access. It uses a nine kill Hurts wide channel, but the data is sent in tandem in the frames that are going over over our f so we don't need to split the voice in data like Fusion where they have six and a half or six on a quarter and six and a quarter.
Right.
M seventeen uses the whole nine killer Hurts wide channel for both the voice and streaming digital data. So in the in the packets, in the frames that are going over RF is actual metadata included, so the voice codec that so we have a we have a forty eight hundred bit per second transfer rate over the air. Thirty two hundred of that is for voice. It is the codec to thirty two hundred bps voice mode. The extra
what is it sixteen hundred bits? Yeah? I think it's sixteen hundred bits is used for metadata, so things like encryption, GPS, positioning, slow text data like Dstar has slow text data.
You know.
M seventeen can do slow text data. Any sort of metadata that you want to add in on top of that voice stream is possible with not having to increase the bandwidth of the of the channel or separate out specific parts of the channel four you know, the voice in voice stream and data stream.
So is the total channel only nine Killer Hurts instead of twelve point five?
Then yes, it is under it is. It is still considered a twelve and a half channel because there is no nine Killer Hurts wide you know, uh channel split? Yeah, okay, just like there isn't a six point twenty five for amateur radio. Can still use twenty five Killer Hurts or twenty twenty four Killer Hurts. Yes, we can still use voice wide channels. But M seventeen has the ability or M seven it's not the ability. M seventeen is nine Killer Hurts wide, so it'll fit into a twelve and
a half channel. There was an idea of being able to use the extra sideband or or the extra frequency space that we have on a twelve and a half Killer Hurts channel to also transmit analog. So a repeater would be able to transmit a simultaneous M seventeen data as well as analog voice on the same channel, and have it so that a radio that is properly configured for this to be able to receive an analog channel
even though somebody might be transmitting IAIN seventeen. It's kind of weird physics, and it's a little bit more science than I know off the top of my head, but the idea is there, Okay, So we have we have a little bit of extra bandwidth that we can kind of squeeze some stuff into if we wanted to, because we know that it's going to be that nine Killer Hurts wide the two point four plus minus deviation on either side of the center, so we still have some
bandwidth on the on the edges, kind of like if you've seen like the HDU radio signals that FM broadcasters have. If you look at like the center channel frequency, you'll see the FM obviously, but I either side you've got the digital data for AT radio on that same channel. So it's two hundred and fifty color, it's wide, but you have those side bands that are on the same channel that I was doing the HD radio. I was kind of reversing that, so the digital data would be
in the center and the FM yeah on the sides. Yeah. Kind of an interesting thing to think about, but I don't know if it would be physically possible yet.
I I would like we were We were at the park yesterday, as I mentioned earlier, and uh, twenty meters was just chalk full of people between supports parks weekend, a lot of people out at parks. Jamboree on the air was yesterday, and apparently the New York QUSA party was also yesterday, which I didn't know. I just was tuning around and a lot of people were calling CQQ soo party. Well, there was a couple of people on fourteen dot two thirty and they were even covered up
by They're like, yeah, there's some digital noise. I'm like, dude, that's the slow scan TV station. So we to put our phones on top of my radio just kind of listened to. We were getting all kinds of really cool pictures coming. So so you're sitting there talking about an extra like three Killer's and I'm like, do some slow scan TV over that. That's not bad, you know, so kind of it was some kind of like low reds midget transmission while you're while you're uh, while you keet
up on the frequency. It'd be kind of fun. So memes over HD, right, Yeah, well that's all slow scan TV is anymore. It's just memes over the air, that's all it is.
It's because of Josh.
Uh he has it. Yeah, yeah, he has a big can in that. So yeah, I'm just uh, it's crazy. But yeah, there was some cool stuff coming over slow scan TV yesterday.
Shout out to the Ham Radio Village guys too, they do a lot of slow scan TV over there, or deaf Con group.
Of the deaf Con group. Yeah, those guys are sure. Okay, sweet.
Qualm uh don If you hold your horses for a bit, you might see something. We we were talking about using M seventeen over satellite. We have been able to get M seventeen through Ecostar twelve. I think it is, you know, basically bent pipe. So you're just sitting there, you know, transmitting and then hearing what's going on through the satellite and all the tests went well. They went very very well.
So we were kind of thinking about was doing RF trunking for repeaters, so repeaters could have multiple channels trunked up to a satellite using quadratary amplitude or something similar, whether it be two fifty six qualm or you know whatever else. I mean, we're starting to get into the whole you know, realm of cable TV when we're talking about you know, exotic modes like that. But yeah, something like that might might come into the future.
All right, I lost it. Where did the question go?
No, I lost it a long time ago.
Oh yeah, well I never had it. So somebody was asking about setting up Gosh, I just saw your question and I looked it up, and I looked back at this corner. Okay, K six A the hillbilly Ham. It's a great name, by the way, like it. What ref reference would I connect to using my yazy radio for M seventeen is? I don't have him seventeen right now. So this is what you want, and I need to
get and I've got one of these. I've got one of these in my possession and I need to get ed and ed and steve back on the show, so we can connect it and uh and just kind of tinker around with it. This connects to the back of your jesoo FtM six thousand. And does it do any other radios besides that.
Anything that's ninety six hundred BOD capable connect? Yeah?
So the Alinko radios. No, No, not the Alnko radios.
Unless you actually do the modification for it, because it is capable of those. A Linko radios are capable of ninety six hundred BOD, But it's that that funky g r G five r UX or whatever. Okay, you know, funky ninety six hundred BOD like mode. The most important thing to know about M seventeen is that it requires a completely flat audio response on a radio. So basically
that means discriminatory tap and direct base band input. And the radios that we have been successful with have been a lot of the ASU radios, a few of the Kenwood radios have been tested, all of the Motorola like CDM radios, the old WIREUS radios, those those are are wonderful for it.
What about the ninety.
The icon No, so I love to have the flat audio coming out of the back of the radio.
Yeah, okay, okay, I may or may not have just acquired at ninety seven hundred that I haven't opened yet. So if you test it, test it, yeah, yeah, I mean I might. I might. I might kind of, you know, kind of see what's going on with it. But yeah, I didn't. I mean, I don't know. I don't even know if I assume that radio has a in the back of it.
I don't think there's a data port coming out of the icons.
Is they're not? Okay, there might not be. So, I mean all those a Linko Mono bands have it. That's why those are excellent radios for all Star because you get a repeater builder rim Alinko device and plug it right in, plug it into a Raspberry Pine you're done. And those are fantastic systems. I have one sitting right there.
But so I think it's like the yellow wire mod or something like that that needs to get done for the Linko radios. Okay, okay, okay, to get them working with the flat audio.
Okay, I mean I got two of them here, I could I could tear them a pat and figure it out a pot a.
Pot and uh and yeah, I mean I don't. I mean you said anything with the with the port in the back. And the most popular one I think is the a Linko Because they're mono bands, so they're less expensive and they're multi band, you can get.
Pretty affordable.
That is true. That is true. That's a newer radio. It's a newer radio. But that yes, f TM six thousand. I keep that. I keep that in a little man pack and with my ed pong roll up J pole and.
That you need.
Yeah, that's it right there. So that's that's your So I take I take the uh yeah, I take that that little man pack radio with me every time I go to a show and I set it up at the ham fest at my campsite or wherever. And it's fifty watts in into into a net phong roll up J pole that I put up with like ten or fifteen feet. It's a hell of a better than an HT. So I love that. I love that radio for what it is. But and I've been meaning to put that freaking that. In fact, I forgot I had that thing
until I got this radio. And I hit you guys up at Discord the other day and I'm like, wait a minute, I've got that m seventeen monde six down. I never did anything with it, so, uh, that's just another thing on the list that I need to need to do. But yeah, that's good. Okay. Uh, you guys share a link to your discord if you don't mind, send it to me in zoom and I'll put it. I'll put it in the chat here. So if you guys are in A seventeen and you're not on the
M seventeen discord, I'm on the M seventeen discord. I don't get on there a whole lot, but I was on there talking to these guys about a week ago, talking about when I got that email from Connect Systems and I said I ordered the Plus and they're like, you don't don't want we Plus.
We jumped on that.
Yeah, yeah, it's like you don't you don't want the Plus because the firmware is not ready yet. And I'm like, well, it doesn't really say that, so it's a little ambiguous. Yeah, but you know what Jerry says, yeah, right right, you know, it's not your fault. It's not.
He's definitely staying on top of things when it comes to making sure that things are getting you know, sent out.
I mean, you know what, he's the first guy to actually have an RF capable, commercially available M seventeen radio, So I'm not dogging him at all. So he's he's in fact the CS seven thousand years ago. If you've been following Connect Systems for a while, the c S seven thousand was supposed to be a multi mode dmr D Star Confusion P twenty five radio, like seven eight nine years ago, and then he scrapped that project for because he figured out that it was hard to do.
I jacked up my hold on, I jacked up my zoom here at there we go. And now he's calling it the c S seven seventeen, and I think it's great. I think it's great that he has an actual radio that will do M seventeen over RF. So I'm glad I bought this. Like I said a minute ago, it's a sturdy radio. It feels nice. I thought it was gonna look like a TYT MD twenty seventeen or m D three ninety. It doesn't look like that at all. It's it's it's a great it's a great feeling radio.
It's a it's a very well built I think, and I'll see how how will it works. I'm gonna put it on.
The h for a BNC.
That's a good idea. Yeah. Well, and this this longer intent, I'll probably put like a stubby intent on mine, like one of those squatty intent because I'm just using it to talking to the hot spot which is right there. I don't need a high high range antenna on that, so this is a little bit better to do that. But I put links to this hot spot that has
WPSD with M seventeen factory installed, and this radio. I'll put links to both those in the description of this video, So you guys go back and check the description of the video. There's links to both of those there. I don't get anything for this radio. I don't have it's not an affiliate link or anything like that. In fact, Jerry didn't even know I was doing this live stream. Hopefully, you guys, I'll go bombard his website tomorrow and tell him that ham Radio two point zero cent you just
just because just because I like to do that. But I don't get anything for that. There's no affiliate commission or anything like that at all.
So yeah, you get complaints when his website gets you.
Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, good, all right? Any other questions from the chat.
Questions that we can answer.
Yeah, I don't know, Steve. You've gone over my head a couple of times tonight.
I'm gone over.
You're doing okay?
Yeah?
Uh oh okay, I didn't realize this. Maybe you can speak to this for in it. Jody says, kudos on putting the OHIS port on Module seventeen. Yes, so you guys have the open headset standard port on it.
Yep. Mark Smith has been a huge help with getting all that straightened out. And yeah, the actually, as a matter of fact, I have a couple of his kits right here for the open headset you know, do it yourself. Yeah, module that I need to test out. But yeah, we were are I think the second project, the second open source project to include the OHIS connector on a radio type device. Mark has been a huge supporter of M seventeen.
He was actually the one that created the whole idea for call sign encoding for us as well, so you know, his his ideas have been put into the M seventeen spec. But when I saw that he had an open source headset interconnect thing, I said, we need to put that into our project because these little CLICKI balfung you know, speaker mic things. It's so one of the things that I keep saying is garbage in, garbage out. You got garbage microphone, it's going to sound like garbage over the
over the air. With the Open Headset Interconnect Standard, you can use any quality headset with the Module seventeen and it's a simple connection. You just plug your headset in and you're good to go. And so when they were redesigning the Module seventeen, I really pushed for this and that was a little bit of kick back, but you know, we got everything straightened out and it's working.
Great, excellent. Yeah, I interviewed Mark on this show like maybe a year ago, a year and a half ago, something like that. I saw something on qr Z about this open Headset intercon inter Interconnect standard, I think is what it is. And I'm like, oh, that sounds interesting, or maybe maybe I got an email about it something like that and I was like, Hey, you want to come on the show and talk about it. So and I'm like, you know, that's kind of a neat sound
in It's a great idea if everyone adopts it. But and I'm glad to see So, I'm glad to see you guys adopted that. It's great. So I need to pick up one of those kiss now that I know it's available for this radio, I'll probably do that soon.
It's available for the module seventeen.
For the uh, the one that goes on my six thousand.
Yeah, for the version one point zero. It's not on the newest version of the module seventeen.
Okay, I think that's the one I have. No, no, no, I don't no. When did that come out?
Uh?
It was released during ham Radio friedrich Schoffen, So when we when I was over there in friedrich Schoffen, we released it.
Okay, And how does that differ from the one I have?
Uh, it's the one that has that HMI board that I was talking about that goes over the module and gets installed into a hammered case. There's a bunch of traces that were redesigned parts that were replaced for better parts, et cetera, et cetera. So still, no, EGO isn't manufacturing them, at least not that I'm aware of, or and I don't know if they have any plans for that right now, it's still just an open source project that you would have to get boards made for by yourself.
Gotch oh, okay, so they're not commercially available, not yet. Okay, okay, okay, good, okay, okay, cool just looking at the chat here. Okay, that's good, all right, well cool man. Hey got both of you guys, Ed and Steve. Thanks for your time tonight. I like to keep I think I told you guys when oh Frank when it speaking of speaking of Ed, Frank wanted me to print a picture of him and put it behind me tonight, So hey, print a picture of me. See if anybody else I've got. I saw a picture of.
All of the team in Germany right there.
Okay, it's got a picture of a guy behind him.
Yeah, boy, check behind me.
So the story behind that, if you don't know? At where was that Ham Cash this last year?
Uh yeah? So we were at Yeah Cash, Yeah.
Yeah, Florida, Orlando, and I walked by the thank you, thank you, Chad for the gifted memberships. Appreciate that. So Steve is there and M seventeen has a booth and Steve is there and he has a picture of Ed. Kind of like in a frame on the table on the back wall, and everybody's coming by saying what happened to Ed?
Is he?
Okay? What I mean, like as a memorial to or something like.
Did not help at all.
I forgot about that. I forgot about that. Yeah, so that that's a Redding joke, is that?
Yeah?
Frank's like, hey, put a picture of me behind you. I was like, well, I don't have a picture of you, Frank. But that's a great idea though.
That that originally came from Rosie over at ar d C.
Yeah.
First, okay, Yeah, the first trip that we took to Germany, Ed wasn't able to go with us, so, you know, as a dedication to Ed and to have him with us in the photo, we had him on the back wall when we were taking photos and everything like that. And Rosie, Rosie was a great person. It's got a awesome sense of humor. So Ever since then, I forced Voychek to hold onto that photo, so every time that we go to another event, he has it with him and we put it up. I was like, I have
enough pictures of it. I don't need another one to carry around.
I got a ton of phone calls and text messages.
Are you okay?
Are you okay?
Yeah?
Yeah? Oh dubt that at all. Uh that was funny because it really looked like a memorial picture. And I'm like, dude, what happened to Ed? Hey man?
Ed?
You got it?
You got a fan base, buddy, because I mean people were concerned about you. That's a good thing. That's awesome. So all right, well, but when I brought you guys on the first time, I think it was like haamvention, Like the next year you said that I was the first channel to ever live stream about seventeen. I'm like, well, we got to keep this going.
So this is like this is like the seventh appearance.
I think something like that.
That's what it's going to happen.
I hope. So that'd be great. That'd be great. We would uh, we would, we would like that. So but yeah, we like to keep up with you guys, and I mean aar DC grant. You guys have made a lot of progress since then, and it's been fun to kind of follow you guys and see what what all all the different hands that are in it, all the different ideas everybody comes up with, and just how it's progressing.
One of the things we were I was at a Meshtastic convention two or three, a very small one here locally, uh, two or two or three weekends ago, and they were talking about the fact that Meshtastic is open source and how this and this and this and what can we do to make it better? And I'm like, let me tell you something. Ham Radio is all about open source stuff right up until the point where people just kind of like lose interest in it because there's no corporate
backing behind it. There's no marketing, there's no advertising, there's no this, that and the other. I've seen a lot of open source projects die on the on the table because people just kind of like, oh, yeah, well that hadn't updated in six months, so what else is new? You know, that kind of thing. So but M seventeen having that boost from a RDC, I think is going
to be a really really good project for that. So I look forward to seeing how you guys grow, what else you come up with, whether kind of new radios will come out with, and what goes from there. Have you have you talked to Joe with kamjat to see if he's gonna try to work on anything with that or is that a it is, it is possible. Yeah.
The problem that we're running into is that nobody wants to do the work because M seventeen, even though it's open source, doesn't mean that our time is free. And so a lot of these organizations that are asking for M seventeen to be built into their products get kind of scared away when we say, okay, well, this is how much it's going to cost for me to do that for you. Oh yeah, okay, you know it's open source.
Anybody can do the work if they understand it. But again, you know, these companies have to realize that time is money.
Time is money, sure, absolutely, yeah, you know.
I mean I'd love to do the work for free, but I can't eat yeah spaghetti off of free right.
Yeah. No, I don't blame you. I don't blame you. I really, I really don't blame you. I mean the end product, I mean, you pay for it once, you pay programmer one time, and then you have it forever. The end product is what it's is what it's about with the open source thing. So no, I don't blame me. I would do the same thing. So, yeah, if I was a programmer, in which I am not. You don't want me programming your stuff, so you can hire Frank.
I'd love to hire Frank.
That.
I tried to get Frank a job with Flex Radio like three years ago at Ham Vincheon. He's like well, and I'm like, they're in Austin, They're like three hours south of us. And he's like, well, I like going into the office. I'm like, you are no longer my friend. I'm like, you have a job. You have an interview. He wasn't offered a job. I was like, you have an interview with Flex freaking Radio, Frank, and you like and you do. And he lives by him so off
and he doesn't like to work from home. I'm like, seriously, why am I friends with you? I don't even I don't know who you are. I like to tease him about that because he's a good sport, but you know, but yeah, so.
He's also crazy enough to jump out of a perfectly good point.
That is that is a that is a good point as well. Yeah, that is a good point as well. So I was at a local I was at that I think it was Belton, on one of our local hamfests, and they're like, hey, where's the guy that jumps out of planes. I'm like, Carlos, he lives in Indiana. No, no, no, the other guy that lives down here. I'm like Frank. He's like, yeah, worse. I'm like, that's not how you describe Frank, the guy that jumps out of planes. That's
not right. That's wrong, fundamentally wrong with that. Great Yeah, I think twice. Carlos probably has a thousand jumps under his film, but Frank is the guy who jumps out of planes. I don't know. I found that. I found that odd.
Famous.
Yeah I'm famous. Oh boy. Yeah, all in good fun, All in good fun, guys. Thanks once again for your time tonight. We will definitely keep in touch. I share the link to the discord. I'll put the link to the discord in the description. Also for you guys on Team Replay, y'all can go check that out the discord, the seventeen discord. If you have any questions or comments, or if you're a developer and want to get involved in the project, I'm sure they'd welcome me in there.
And yeah, that's it's gonna be. It's a it's a good it's gonna be really fun to see how well it goes. And I'm gonna have fun listening to this for the next couple of weeks to see just the activity and what it overall sounds. Likes that are just listened it for a couple of minutes on the live stream, so it's gonna be a good, good project to follow. So uh, both of you guys, Ed Steve, thanks for your time tonight, and uh just kind of look forward to seeing where it goes from here.
Awesome.
Thanks JAS support amateur radio, open source projects, go out there, get you told GitHub account and see what else is out there.
Love yeah projects, Yeah, yeah, good, good, good, All right, guys, thanks a lot. We're gonna we're gonna let y'all go and we'll talk to everybody in the chat. We'll talk to you'all this week sometimes. So seventy three at all.
Nice, seventy three later