E1488: Do We Have TOO MANY Digital Modes?

sign up today and thank you for the support. Digital voice standards DMR Dstar, JESU System Fusion P twenty five NXDN the new M seventeen module. Why do we need so many digital voice modes in amateur radio and should they be standardized? I'm going to give you my thoughts in my insights, and I want to know what you think, So let's go. Today's video is sponsored by him dot Live.

See my interview in the link in the description blow of you Sean the creator of ham dot live and use ham dot live on your next net control activation for greater interest this idea. The idea for this video came to me from a comment I got on one of my latest videos about asking the Big four manufacturers what we need next? What do we need next? As far as radios go in the amateur radio world, what do we want to see in the amateur radio world? And what kind of radio are are people asking for?

So this comment right, And once again, this comment came to me through there, and I thought this would make a really good video. It's something I've done videos about before in the past, and it's something I have not changed my mind about. In fact, I've got a little bit more insight for it now. So let's take a look at this real quick. This comes from Wayne pr and he's down in Australia VK three ecs Now, let me first say, Wayne, I agree with some of your points,

but not all of them. I'll put it like that. But this is in no way to hassle you. I'm not trying to call you out as being wrong or anything like that. I just want to make some points about this comment you made, so we don't have to agree, and that's okay. And you may not agree with what I say, and that's certainly okay too. But he says talking to fella, and again this is following the video that I made about what comes next? What do we

want to see from the Big four Japanese manufacturers? In the amateur radio world, which in short, was a dual band all mode radio, a smaller mobile sized dual band almode radio, and a replacement for either the eight fifty seven or ICY seven thousand. So go watch that video link. It appearance somewhere talking to fellow Ham's here in Australia. Lots of them don't want he says s Star. He means d Star. Lots of them don't want d Star or Yazy Fusion. They want the much more popular and

widely used DMR. So they are purchasing brands that have DMR and sadly that doesn't include icon In. YESU, he's correct about that. I think DMR is more popular than the other two. But also remember that's because it's a commercial standard, not an amateur radio standard, so only han are buying d Star and Fusion radios. Lots more people are buying DMR radios than just Hams, so it's kind of not an apples to apples comparison. But he's not wrong.

DMR is more is the most popular standard out there right now, this three way digital battle has to come to an end, and there has to be one across the Board's standard. I disagree. I disagree with that statement, and I will explain why bear with me. Having to have two or three or even two or even three radios D Star or Yazy Fusion and DMR just so you can talk to others on a different digital network is just stupid. And he says, yes, I know you

can get a hot spot, but is that a real answer. No, Well, actually it is a real answer. Actually, it is a real answer because you don't have to talk on every network. You don't have to talk on every band, you don't have to talk on every mode. You pick one that you like, or maybe a couple that you like, and you talk on those. Everything does not have to be interconnected. Everything does not have to be interconnected, and there's no reason it should be. More options are better than less,

So let's keep reading. I'm gonna tell you my thoughts on that as well. There needs to be a digital standard in Australia. There are far more DMR repeaters than there are D Star Refusion. I believe that jesu Icon and Kinwood should give the purchaser an option to either purchase their radio with the digital mode or their radio with DMR. Okay, Well, Kinwood has DMR radios. They're on the commercial the NX series, the next edge, the NX

fifty eight hundred x fifty five hundred. I think they're commercially produced and for sale radios, and they have commercial price tags on them too. Great radios, but you can actually get a Kinwood DMR radio today. They're monoband but they are made for each DMR radio and amateur radio purchases. That's one less icom or Jesu that an amateur is purchasing.

I think what he means by that is that if Yazu and Icon gave us a choice between either d Star Fusion or DMR and we started purchasing more DMR radios ten then we would basically just weave them out of the amateur radio community, which is probably true. Honestly, Honestly, I think he's got a point there. Okay, so here's my thoughts about everything he said. Okay, there needs to be a digital and he doesn't even talk about M seventeen or P twenty five or NXDN. NXDND is used

very much in my area. I think there's some pretty good NXDN networks in Florida, I believe, and there's some P twenty five repeaters in this area and they get used kind of good, but you know, it's not near the big three as it were. Is DMR, D Star Infusion okay, and M seventeen is an up and comer. I really like using the M seventeen. No, I don't think there should be a standard, And no, I don't

think you should expect to have all these networks tied together. Now, there are ways to tie I know there's networks out there where people tie in Fusion, D Star, DMR, P twenty five, all of the thing, even All Star Analog all Star is tied into it and everybody so everybody can talk to everybody all at the same time. Well, great, now you've got a traffic jam. Now you've got a system that's just of traffic because everyone and their dog is keyed up from every mode and every standard around

the country, around the world. And now you've got people talking on this system that's basically unusable because it's got so much traffic from all of the sources that no one really people give up, People give up them, they go elsewhere. So is that a solution. I don't think that's a solution. Look, we don't have a digital standard in HF radio. The term digital get gets thrown around too commonly. Okay, so what we're talking about today is digital voice DMR D Star Jesus System Fusion P Twenty

five seventeen. These are digital voice modes. When you say digital modes in HF radio, you're talking about FT eight JS eight, call JT sixty five PSK thirty one. Riddy, there's a bunch more. There's a bunch more little ones out there you've probably never heard of. There's some out there I've never even heard of. I heard about a new one the other day. There's one called Oliver or Olivia or something like that. That one's been around a while.

But J nine is another one FT four. Okay. So there's a lot of digital transmission standards in HF, and these are basically keyboard to keyboard protocols. You're on a computer a keyboard and you're typing a message, or you send a signal from a computer program across the airwaves to another person with a computer that's decoding that signal and sending it back to you, and you have a

qso that way, those don't need to be standardized. We don't need to get rid of everything but FT eight or we don't need to go back to PSK thirty one and get rid of everything except that we don't need to mesh all of those together. Okay, So I don't think you should look at digital voice that way either. Analog voice is the same way. Guess what we have FM repeaters. We have AM and single sideban on HF. We have AM and single sideban on simplex on two

meters and four forty as well. I don't think all of those should be meshed together. And I'd say get rid of AM and get rid of sideban. Everyone talk on FM. No, No, I don't think we got upper and lower sideban. We got different sides of the sideband. Okay, you've got AM with this which both side mans. I think all of those modes and features, all of those modes and transmission types have a place somewhere. So no, I don't think there should be a digital voice standard.

I think people should use what they want to. I think if you want to use DMR, you should go off on your own DMR network. Forget about connecting d Star and system Fusion to it. Okay, if you want to use d Star then go off on a d Star network and talk to your d Star buddies. Forget about connecting fusion and DMR to it. What's the point I understand you say, well, we don't want to leave people out. Well, okay, okay, but there's no one stopping

you from buying a radio for this mode. Okay. And you can also get pi star and now the new open Spot four and four pro and the new m one Ke open Spot there that they just came out with. I just ordered one of those. We'll see that. In fact, you might see that video before this one. We'll see the open spot will transcode everything to everything. It'll it'll transcode DMR to d Star to Fusion to back to dm to P twenty five to NXDN, all of the things.

The open Spot does not do M seventeen yet, but pi Star will do transcoding of M seventeen to some things. I don't think it's fully transcodable yet, but it probably will be one day. Pie Star does not do d Star transcoding, so you have to have a pie Star to do M seventeen, and you have to have an open Spot to do d Star trans coding. Okay, right, now, at the time of this recording, seventeen is on its it's in its infancy, it's brand new. It hasn't even

been fully implemented yet. As far as I know, there's only one radio in the world that actually transmit M seventeen simplex, So M seventeen is not really part of the game yet. I think it will be. I think it should be. I think it's a neat mode. I'm looking forward to trying it more and more. In fact, here is my seventeen CS seveny seventeen radio right there. Did a live stream with Ed and Steve on this a while back. I'm going to do some more videos

with that soon. Son as an up and comer, but it's not quite there yet as far as the other three goes. So, but the open spot will do trans coding. So if you want to buy a DMR radio and talk on d Star, you can do that with an open spot. If you want to buy a d Star radio and talk on DMR re fusion, you can do

that with an open spot. There are ways out there, and you say, well, that's not a good They just need to forget everything and just get rid of everything and make one standard and I'm like, how is that different? First of all, you're regulating digital voice if you do that, and second of all, you're limiting the places that amateur radio operators can talk. I think we should. I think we should have more places to talk, not less. I don't think less places to talk is the answer to

the situation that we're talking about today. Okay, so I think more places to talk, not less, is the thing to do. When you're talking about digital voice modes. If you don't want to talk on d Star, you don't want to talk on System Fusion, you don't want to talk on DMR because you don't want to buy these modes.

Hey man, more power to it. That's fine, But I don't think there should be an expectation that you key up on every system and every network anywhere, and you should be able to get into that network and that system from any mode including all Star, Analog all Star, or Echo Link all Star including that, and get in there so everyone can talk everywhere. I think that just creates big, big networks that are bad with latency, have too many people on them, have a lot of drop

packets because there's just too much on the system. Go off and get on your own talk group and your own chat room and your own whatever to talk to your buddies instead of trying to clog up one or two systems that has everyone on it. So I want to go. I want to know what you guys think below. Put a comment BLOW, because I'd like to know what you think. Do you use what's your favorite? First of all, let me ask what's your favorite digital mode? What is

your favorite digital mode? Okay is at DMR Dstar system Fusion. Do you have one of each? I have one of each. I have several of each. Actually, I'm looking forward to m seventeen. And if you're planning on running nets or participating in a net on any of these modes, there's an seventeen net I think out of Oklahoma on Mondays. I keep meaning to check into that. I got to put it on my calendar so I remember it. If you're planning on doing net control or checking into any

of these nets, I highly recommend ham dot Live. It is a free service. I interviewed Sean from hamt Live on this channel a while back. I will put a link to that video in the description blow. Ham dot Live is like Netlogger, but more robust. You can access

it from any platform. It's web based. You can get to it from your phone, tablet, or computer, whatever computer operating system you have, and you can share links to it and get people more interested in seeing what's happening on your net with just a more interactive interface then you're used to. So share the link to ham dot live, check the linked in the description, blow and thank you HAMDT Live for supporting this channel. So I really want to know what. I want to know what your favorite

digital mode is. Are you using M seventeen, are you looking forward to that? And do you disagree with what I said today? I don't think there should be a standard and digital voice anymore, and I think there should be a standard in HF digital or in analog voice. You want to create a new digital voice mode, go for it. Ham Radio is all about experimentation. It's all about experimentation and trying new standards. And that's exactly what

we're doing when we brought DMR into Ham Radio. That's what we were doing when we were the group that's working on M seventeen, that's what they're doing. You don't want to talk on it, don't talk on it. You're happy over on d Star and then use d Star you're happy over on Fusion, use Fusion. I've gotten a lot more into Fusion lately. Honestly, even though I think DMR is probably a better standard than most of these, I kind of lost my interest for DMR because people

just don't use it correctly. I'm gonna put it that way. People don't use it correctly. Yeah, that's what I'm gonna say. If you want to know more about that, put a comment in the video blow and maybe I'll make another video about that. But right now, check out this video because it is what YouTube thinks that you want to watch next. Seventy three