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Please stand by. This episode of HamTalk Live
is brought to you by Tower Electronics. For connectors,
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you or call 920 -435 -2973 or online at pl -259
.com. Hey good evening everyone it's HamTalk
Live episode number 122 on System Fusion recorded
live on Thursday July 5th 2018. I'm your host
Neil Rapp WB9VPG and thanks for tuning in to
another episode of HamTalk Live. Tonight we're
joined by Corey Sickles WA3UVV and we'll take
your calls live in a few moments. Last week,
Marty Sillaway, KC1 Chicken with Fries, and Don
Greenbaum, N1DG, who was live from Baker Island.
They were here to talk about the Baker Island
De -Expedition. And they did go QRT today, made
a lot of contacts, and so now they have... have
begun the teardown process and believe tomorrow
will begin the journey home. But if you missed
that show, you can listen anytime. Just go to
HamTalkLive .com and bring it up there. Or you
can listen to one of our podcast editions over
on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, iHeart Podcasts,
Google Play, TuneIn, SoundCloud, or your favorite
app. and we're also over on YouTube. So get your
questions ready to go. After the interview, you
can call us. I'll go ahead and give you the phone
number, but it's not time to call just yet. It's
812 -NET -HAM -1. That's 812 -638 -4261. Or you
can Skype us. We're HamTalk Live on Skype. And
of course you can tweet us. We're at HamTalk
Live on Twitter. This summer we're giving away
some prizes to people who call in on the telephone
lines So thanks to radio waves for donating a
40 meter 40 meter Double bazooka and Hile sound
for donating an Mcom headset foot switch two
autographed Bob Hile ham radio manuals and a
bag So each night at the end of the show, I'll
pick a call of the night So just be sure to call
in when it's time and who knows, you may win
one of our prizes. So make sure you stick around
for that. And yeah, if this were WKRP in Cincinnati,
somebody would call in and ask, why didn't Comcast
send us an email telling us that the internet
was down? So if you don't have internet, I'm
not sure how you're supposed to get that email.
But anyway Yeah, we've got a Comcast outage here.
I've been without internet for the last three
hours. So We're doing this by cell phone Internet
tonight. So hopefully that holds up. So if we
suddenly disappear That's probably what happened.
So just wanted to let you know about that. And
also, uh, one other reminder, uh, don't forget
that next week, the show is at eight o 'clock
in the morning instead of nine o 'clock at night.
That's because we're going to be on German time
and, uh, we'll be coming to you live from WRTC.
Ed Durant, DD5LP will be our engineer on hand
to bring some people to us to interview and talk
to and take calls from. and two over in Germany
at WRTC next week. So again, special time 8 a
.m. next Thursday instead of 9 p .m. So I'll
be back with Cory and we'll talk about system
fusion right after this word from Tower Electronics
right here on HamTalk Live. Hey honey, have you
seen the PL259s anywhere? No, I haven't. Come
on kids, let's go. There's just one place to
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TOWER ELECTRONICS! Hi, I'm Scott Cole, KB9 AMM,
President of TOWER ELECTRONICS. I like the company
so much that I bought it. TOWER ELECTRONICS,
coming to a hand fest near you, or online at
PL -259 .com. And we're in the yellow pages under
amateur radio connectors. My, wherever did you
get that lovely PL -259? TOWER ELECTRONICS, PL
-259 .com. or call 920 -435 -2973. Do we sell
PL259 connectors? It's not the amount of power,
it's the size of our tower. Thanks to Scott and
Jill at Tower Electronics for bringing the show
to you again tonight. Coming up this weekend,
they'll be in South Milwaukee at the Oak Creek,
Wisconsin ham fest on the 7th. And then next
month, August 5th, Berryville, Virginia. August
11th, Huntington, West Virginia. and then August
18th and 19th, they'll be at Huntsville, Alabama,
but you can visit them anytime at PL -259 .com.
Well tonight our guest is Corey Sickles, W -A
-3 -U -V -V. He's from Uniontown, Pennsylvania
and was first licensed as a novice in 1974. Today
he holds an extra class license and is active
on HF plus many of the VHF and UHF bands. He
has worked as a television producer to create
broadcast, marketing, fundraising, documentary
and instructional programming. as well as providing
broadcast engineering and communications consulting
services. He's written many magazine articles
and columns over the years for various CQ magazine
publications and for the past few years he's
written digitally speaking a monthly column for
the Spectrum Monitor magazine. Corey is the Western
Pennsylvania ARRL section's public information
coordinator, and he's a member of the Gloucester
County Amateur Radio Club, W2MMD, the New Jersey
QRP Club, Gloucester City Amateur Radio Club,
NJ2GC, Uniontown Amateur Radio Club, W3PIE, the
Monongila wireless association, W8MWA, the Strait
Key Century Club and Vintage Computer Federation
as well. And it can often be found on one of
the many reflectors, talk groups, or rooms on
digital voice radio. So, Corey, thanks for joining
us on the show tonight. My pleasure, Neil. Thank
you. And I think I messed that up, too. Was it
Monangela? Monongalia Monongalia now you have
you have to tell the story you told me about
the name as the legend goes the Intent was that
it was supposed to be Monongahela County like
Monongahela River Monongahela Valley in Pennsylvania
But the court clerk apparently did not know how
to spell Monongahela He's not aware that she
was spelling it incorrectly. So she sent the
paperwork in as Monongalia And the name, of course,
stuck once the proceedings were filed. Well,
there you go. So, wonderful, wonderful things
there. Well, anyway, here on the show, we've
done D -Star, we've done DMR. We haven't done
System Fusion, so tonight I wanted to cover System
Fusion a little bit, so tell us about System
Fusion and what it is and how it works. Okay,
System Fusion is one of five different digital
voice with DV methodologies that Hams are able
to use in North America. There is D -Store and
DMR you mentioned, there's also P25, NextDen
and XDen, which was a cooperative effort between
Icom and Kenwood. Icom markets it as IDAS and
Kenwood as NextEdge, no T. And essentially you
have three of those that come to us from Land
Mobile World. Only D -Star and System Fusion
were designed by Hamz, for Hamz. P25 goes all
the way back to 1990, D -Star 2004, DMR 2006,
and then in 2014, System Fusion gets its full
release. When it first came out on the market,
people were very curious about what it was and
wondering why Yesu decided to create something
completely different instead of going with some
other things, and there were a lot of rumors
and stuff. I was probably one of those people
as well that wondered what they were doing and
at that time all they had was just the the FT1
DR portable on the market and They had I you
know, I'm sitting there. I'm curious and I waited
a little while Before I took a trip to the hip
to see if I wanted to play around with one of
these radios And when they announced the the
mobile radio and the repeater was coming I figured,
okay, they've gotten serious about this. I may
as well see what it was like. And a friend I
talked into doing the same thing and I, because
you know from toy walkie talkies, you're gonna
have two to make them any fun. We each bought
one. And we were heavy D -Star users in South
Jersey. We used to have a eight county D -Star
network. As a matter of fact, that was... Really
quite nice it now today. It is a system fusion
network But when we first heard the audio from
fusion our our technical analysis was wow We
were very impressed with quality of audio So
one of the things with fusion is that it is very
high quality video It is extremely easy to configure
the radios Extremely easy to configure repeaters
and networking In a way, it's kind of the Macintosh
of the digital voice world, and that there's
a lot going on behind the scenes, but as a user,
you really don't have to be involved in all of
the moving parts with it. And probably the genius
move that Yesu did with System Fusion was the
inclusion of analog, whereas other methodologies
Would include analog on a local basis with the
icons implementation of these store They decided
to go digital only Which meant that most of their
repeaters went UHF because a lot of clubs didn't
want to give up their two meter You know sort
of intercom, you know, happy club member FM connections
Nobody loses that analog They get digital and
they get to hold on to that throughout the product
line and the infrastructure. So not only do you
have a mix of analog and digital possible on
the same repeater locally, you have it in interconnected
repeaters. We have wireless nodes through the
Wires X system that we see. I'll talk about that
in a little while. Both digital nodes and analog.
and there are hybrid rooms with the two intermingle.
Now, certainly the analog audio isn't as crisp
and clean as digital, but you can still intermingle
those things together. So that in a nutshell
is really it. It's high quality audio, ease of
use and configuration, and full on supportive
analog. Okay, now you talked a little bit about
that. The Fusion has a little higher audio quality
than some of the others. How do you go about
trying to really tell the difference in all of
these? They all do some things that are similar,
yet they all have some advantages and disadvantages.
So how do you just walk us through all of those
and kind of compare, okay, what does this one
do that that one doesn't? Okay Any of these by
the way I consider to be a very nice improvement
over digital the fried eggs and You know civil
yeah issues and things like that You don't have
with with digital. It's it's there or it's not
there one of the things that is nice to have
in the different methodologies is forward error
correction where basically you are looking at
something that dissipates and can correct errors
if you have any dropouts while you're in motion
so that you don't get artifacting and things
like that. Those have been called things like
R2D2 or Turkey Talk. You know, it's that sort
of thing. And heard some of that on HF this afternoon.
Apparently somebody was using a remote station
and it is like, uh, you know, WB. Yeah. Well,
sometimes those things will happen. Um, the advantages
of certain things. One thing, let me, let me
again, break it down a little bit. The part 90
or the land mobile. methodologies. P25, DMR,
and NexDim are designed for environments where
users are not supposed to be making on -the -fly
changes to the radio. You have a radio officer
typically or somebody skilled and assigned those
tasks to configure all the radios together and
that sort of thing so that everybody knows what
you know channel 3 is and that sort of thing.
PAMs, of course, see the world differently, and
we want to stick our fingers into everything
that we can. With DSTOR and Fusion, you can do
that. And also, those two methodologies pass
call sign information, whereas the others pass
a subscriber ID number. There's no call sign
really there. So, if you want to get into a network
situation, you have to have a subscriber ID that
needs to be a unique number. And that's one of
the things you either have to register for, plan
for, in advance of configuring the radio. You
may have heard the term code plug. This comes
from the LMR world. Really, it's a set of configurations
and memories and things like that. We would,
you know, just look at it. and your call sign
being there with I'm going to dance around a
little bit but I have a nonlinear mind so it
kind of works that way. All of these use a technology
called C4FM or continuous four -character FM
modulation. Anyone who's played with RIDI in
the past knows you had two tones mark in space
and kind of think of those as a C2 FM if you
wanted to with four tones again, there is better
error correction and Integrity to the data packets
going down the line The one exception to C4 FM
is D star which uses GMSK Gaussian minimum shift
keying All of them are single Sing yeah single
signal except for DMR, which through time domain
or time slicing in 30 millisecond slices back
and forth, it allows for two slots. It's the
little brother of a methodology that's used in
Europe called Tetra, which uses four slots that
fits within a 25k audio bandwidth, analog audio
bandwidth. DMR fits within 12 and a half. System
Fusion is 12 and a half. D -Store and Nexten
are 6 and a quarter, at least in the way that
they are implemented in the amateur radio. So
the advantage of DMR is that you have this possibility
of holding two conversations through the same
repeater at the same time. However, mind me that
DMR comes to us again from Land Mobile. It originally,
as specified, allowed up to 15 repeaters. This
is a pretty big pallety. It's not so big when
you're trying to connect dozens or hundreds of
repeaters together worldwide in the world of
amateur radio. Having just a few channels on
slot one and a few channels on slot two also
works land mobile, but if you get into high traffic
areas and you set up in those code plugs, which
again, You've got to go back to a computer if
you want to change some things around. Stuff
works great if, let's say, you're on the repeater
on a slot one talk group and I want to be on
a slot two, we coexist quite nicely. But if I
also want to use a slot one talk group, then
I have to wait just as I would with these others.
So sometimes it's an advantage, sometimes it's
not. What has propelled DMR? In in recent years
is a less expensive way of networking and an
influx of very very inexpensive and sometimes
Sometimes that do work as expected and sometimes
the don't There have been a number of hits and
a number of misses along the way they are getting
better with those things but still You're basing
something on You know borrowing from something
else. When I talk about quick configuration with
the radio, if I buy a new Fusion radio, be it
a portable or mobile, I first turn it on, it
will ask me for my call sign. I punch that in
with the pad or can move the VFO knob around
and select. And once I have entered my call sign,
that is all I need to do to be digital ready.
on both a local and a network level type of communication.
So I don't know that it gets any simpler than
that, you know, using the call sign as your unique
identifier. Okay, well, yeah, let's talk a little
bit here before we go to break. If somebody does
want to get on a system fusion repeater, what
are they going to need? Okay, if the repeater
is already there, they simply need a system fusion
radio. Now, that's for digital. I'll back myself
up for a moment. If they want to get on that
repeater and it's operating in automatic mode
select, then they can carry on a normal analog
conversation on that repeater just fine. But
if they want to go digital, then there are digital
radios from Yesu. They have, at present, eight
models in the lineup. There are four which are
considered basic feature models. Two mono -banders,
the FTM3200 for VHF of two meters, the FTM3207,
which is UHF, 70 centimeters. Then there's the
FTM7250, which was, I think, first shown at Dayton
this year. It's a dual -bander, 50 watts each
band. It's kind of as if The 3200 and 3207 had
a baby. You would have ended up with a 7250 as
an offspring. And then a portable radio, the
FT70, which when my wife became licensed last
year, that was the first radio that I got her.
And she keeps that in the car and likes it. She
likes the simplicity of it and easy to talk and
nice and rugged. When you get into the more advanced
radios, you have a... sort of a shack -in -the
-box radio, the FT -991A, which goes from 160
to 10, plus 6, 2 meters and 440. All mode, including
fusion. Nice visual display with plenty of eye
candy in the way of a pan adapter, waterfall,
things like that. And it also is nice if you
like digital modes like FT -8, JT -65. in that
it has a USB port that you can just directly
connect into your laptop without need for buying
an external audio adapter for things, set levels.
So a lot of the keyboard digital enthusiasts
like that. In the mobiles there's the FTM100
which is a dual band single VFO radio and the
FTM400 which is a dual band, dual VFO. Both of
those have APRS capabilities also, very nice
APRS feature set, although it's easier to implement
on the 400 because it is dual VFO. And then we
get to the FT2DR portable, the grayscale touchscreen,
dual VFO, dual band, and APRS, and also, excuse
me, with the camera microphone. An optional accessory
the company sells you can transmit pictures Which
a number of sky warning groups have found is
a nice thing to do Okay, so if you're Still on
analog you can do analog if you're on digital.
Those are the ones that that you can use for
fusion so We're going to take a break and when
we come back we're going to open up the phone
lines here and check Twitter and Skype and See
what questions you all have and again that phone
number is eight one two net ham one eight one
two Six three eight four two six one if you have
a question for Cory We'll be back right after
this word from the National Voice of America
Museum of Broadcasting right here on ham talk
live The National Voice of America Museum of
Broadcasting, located in Westchester, Ohio, just
north of Cincinnati, is only two minutes off
I -75. The museum is the former home of the Voice
of America Bethany Relay Station. Tours are now
available every Saturday and Sunday from 1 to
4 p .m. Eastern Time. You can see the control
room. a 200 ,000 watt transmitter, and the most
comprehensive collection of inventions by the
iconic Powell -Crosley Jr. Also on display is
a huge antique radio exhibit and R .L. Drake's
personal collection of most every Drake amateur
rig ever made. This is a unique opportunity to
see amateur radio in action and have a chance
to get on the air from WC8 V .O .A. Admission
is only five dollars a person. The museum is
located close to historic W .L .W .A .M. and
tons of shopping and restaurants. Take a trip
to the V .O .A. Museum or visit us online at
voamuseum .org. C .Q. C .Q. C .Q. You're listening
to HamTalk Live with Neil Rapp. Join the conversation.
Call us on voice with Skype at HamTalk Live or
give us a call at 812 -NET -HAM -1. That's 812
-638 -4261. Now, here's more HamTalk Live! Ham
talk live is on the air every Thursday night
at 9 p .m. Eastern time right here at ham talk
live comm and be sure to check us out on Facebook
Twitter and Instagram And it's time for your
calls now So if you have a question for Cory
give us a call at 812 net ham one that's eight
one two six three eight four two six one Or you
can Skype us at ham talk live or tweet ham talk
live and again we will pick a call of the night
and give away some prizes here this summer. So
we will give away something here later on. And
Corey was going to talk about what if you don't
have a fusion repeater, but there's a familiar
voice from my past that has called in. And his
name is Neil too. So Neil Sly, welcome to HamTalk
Live. Hey, Neil. Thank you very much. I appreciate
it. Yeah. Put your call sign out there again,
it's been too long. It's still KC9, CJL. CJL,
that's it. Okay. I knew the first part and I
couldn't remember the end of it, but Corey used
to live here in town several years ago and it's
good to hear him here tonight, but we're talking
about system fusion. So why don't you go ahead
and ask your question. Yeah, you know, I think
maybe you've already alluded to it, but you know,
as Corey alluded to earlier, it's no fun if you've
only got one walkie -talkie and you can't talk
to anybody else on the other end. And so, sort
of, you know, my main complaint about system
fusion has just been there doesn't seem to be
that many systems around. Maybe it's just a geographical
thing, a regional thing, but it seems to me like
the system fusion repeaters are expensive when
you contrast that to DMR wherein maybe there's
a higher Sort of barrier to entry technically,
you know things like codeplugs exist for a reason
That's because it's difficult to program DMR
radios But my understanding is that a DMR repeater
equipment would be a little less expensive than
say System fusion repeater equipment. I was just
wondering you know what his take on that was
Okay, and hi other Neil. How are you? Yeah, actually
you gave me a perfect segue into talking about
repeaters because during the break I was mentioning
to Neil that we haven't really discussed that
part yet. So when the first radios came out and
there wasn't a repeater and then there was and
the production repeater was a beta machine first
to help get really product awareness and things
like that with clubs that wanted to try something
new and be progressive with digital voice. The
DR -1X, which was the first production repeater,
came out and many, many have been sold. It is
in fact the most popular methodology in North
America. I can't speak for the whole world, but
some idea of what's going on in North America.
And if you look at a nice website called repeaterbook
.com. You can find maps and listings for states
and provinces and search by niche modes and things
like that for all of this. What Yesu did with
the DR -1X was they offered it at a pretty significant
discount. This was a $1 ,900 repeater MSRP. And
if you were a beta tester, you were able to buy
one for $300. If you came in after that wave,
it was discounted to $500, and then it became
$600, I think after some currency fluctuation.
And when the DR2, which is an improved design
over the DR1, second receiver, you can actually
transmit on a secondary frequency, another antenna.
Over -the -air control with a control operator
whitelist Quite a number of different features
to it. It's more intelligent than what the DR1
had They offered a trade -in program which has
been renewed and is in effect until the end of
this year I understand That if you want to purchase
again at discount a dr2x The company gives you
$600 in trade -in for your DR1X. So at worst
you're breaking even and at best you pick up
a couple hundred dollars along the way depending
upon how early of an adopter you are. So now
the company's taking in all these DR1X's and
what they're doing to continue more growth is
they're refurbishing them at the California and
they are... offering them as the DR -1 XFR or
factory refurbished for only $400. The amazing
part to me was that they're offering it with
a three -year warranty just as if it were new.
So yes, you can build out of a couple of mobiles
and an MMDVM type board, power supply, things
like that. You can build a repeater, and I've
done it. I've actually home -brewed some system
fusion repeaters very inexpensively, but my technical
skills go back several decades. It doesn't sound
like I'm old, but for something that has a three
-year warranty, $400 is hard to beat. That's
very interesting. My understanding was just sort
of very simple from the outside looking in. DMR
was cheap. The others are really expensive, but
that doesn't seem to be the case here at all
no videos the mono banders and the FT 70 portable
are all under $200 again with you know long warranties
like that the The 7250 I think street price is
around 270 but don't quote me on that check with
your favorite dealer and see So, you know, for
what you're getting, those are inexpensive items
as well. You know, if you look at a good DMR
dual band portable right now, you're into that
same money as what the FT -70 is. But I think
there's some equity there as far as that. And
the FT -70 is something that I can program on
the fly. Again, my wife, Debbie, as a notably
new ham, it's pretty easy for her to pick it
up and just, you know, move around. She travels
to West Virginia every day for work, across the
Mason -Dixon line from where we live here, and
they have a different PO tone than what we use
up here, and if she needs to make those changes,
it's pretty easy for her to do things on the
fly if she needs to. Yeah, absolutely. That was
my only question or comment. I'm a huge fan of
the Spectre Monitor. I love your column as well.
I love the magazine as a whole, and thanks very
much for taking the call. Oh, thank you very
much. Appreciate it. Thanks for calling, Neil.
Appreciate it. All right. Thanks, everybody.
I'll talk to you guys soon. All right. Yeah,
we're always other Neil. That's how that works.
So that reminds me of a place I used to where
I was quarry and we had the anti quarry and the
anti quarry. Wow. OK. And then then to confuse
things more, we both worked at the same church
and we both worked in the media area. So. It
was Neil and the other Neil, so yeah, it was
kind of crazy. But if you have a question like
the other Neil, and then I'm the other Neil when
he's talking, it's 812 -NATAM -1, 812 -638 -4261.
Give us a call. We'd love to take your questions
here, and you can also tweet us. We're at HamTalk
Live there, and you can Skype us too. If you'd
rather use that instead of a telephone, you can
use HamTalk Live there on Skype. Now, you were
getting ready to talk about You know, what if
you don't have one of these repeaters? So now
we found out about some of these options that
are maybe a little cheaper than people thought
for repeaters. So what if you don't have one
in your area? Okay. You know, and certainly it's
easy to swap out one repeater for another one.
If you have an older analog repeater, you can
replace it with this thing. It's only two rack
units high. It doesn't take up all that much
space. If it's a new repeater that you're looking
to put into an area, you know, I always like
to look around and say, do I really need repeater
in this area? During the 70s, it was sort of
a, you know, everybody, every club and every
individual seemed to want to have their own repeater.
And we ate up a lot of spectrum that way. With
going back to those days, it was pretty easy.
with a wink and a nod or maybe a case of beer
or something like that to know somebody that
had access to a tower and you could put up a
decent antenna, some hard line and you or one
of the members of your club can climb that tower
and you know life was good. Today to get access
to a tower you need typically insurance, a professional
tower climber and somewhere along the way the
company that owns the tower Is making money off
of it and then good money from a lot of clients
and when you approach them as an amateur radio
club They really don't see you as this wonderful
public service Somebody else that you paying
rent on a tower So pragmatically there are times
where it becomes fiscally difficult. It's not
about the cost of the repeater or even the duplexer,
you know, the hard line and things like that.
It's the ongoing expense of a repeater somewhere.
So enter the Wires X networking scenario, which
allows you to network repeaters, first of all,
remotely. You do not need to have an internet
connection up on top of the hill at the end of
a muddy road to be able to network that repeater.
You can do it remotely. down in the valley in
the safety of your home or office or anywhere
you have a nice, you know, internet pipe. If
you don't have the wherewithal to set up that
repeater, one of the problems I just discussed,
a Wires X node can provide you connections to
Wires X rooms and you can select which one you
want to have active through the keypad on your
radio. If you have a radio like the FDM -400,
it's a nice visual color display there. If you
have one of the mono -banders or the FT -70 portable,
you just enter the numeric code for that room
or node. And many of these things that I'm talking
about you can find off of Yesu's website, Yesu
.com, and look for some of the system fusion
things there. A node... requires anything such
as a FTM 100 or a 400 radio to be your node radio.
Usually the 100 is used because it's less expensive
and you're going to use it just as that node
radio while the node's active. There's an HRI
200 node interface which goes between the node
and your computer. The computer can pretty much
be a fast wind book which are very inexpensive.
I've picked up a number of them in the 70, 75
dollar range. And they have everything you need.
There's a touch screen on those so you don't
have to worry about keyboard and mouse. It has
all the IO ports that are necessary. And that
can run the Windows, I'm sorry, the Wires X software
on a Windows platform. And that takes care of
your Wires X node. This is one of the areas so
that you don't have hidden transmitter syndrome
where instead of the least amount of power, I
do suggest you have all the radios set for higher
power so that other folks in your neighborhood
can hear that somebody is using the node and
not step on them. There is a node configuration
where you can have two radios functioning something
like a crossband repeater. It's very popular
in Japan. where you have a population living
in high rises and many wires, X nodes that connect
AMs throughout the country there. And we see
this in a lot of metro areas. We're also seeing
it in rural areas, more suburban, things like
that. And again, the cost is not that much, and
the coverage is usually what some people are
after, and it gives them that connectivity for
things. One thing that people ask is, where is
this all going? We have five different methodologies
that can be played with. They're going to be
one that stands out. I don't know that technically
one is going to beat out the others. I think
market demands are going to do that. That looks
good for stuff like system fusion. But what's
really nice is in these networks that have been
set up, wires X and some other thing, group bridges
and things like that, I can use a, let's say
an FTM 400 fusion radio in one of these networks
with something like, this is an open standard,
along with all of the others. An open spot a
zoom spot I'm leaving product names out and they
don't mean to it's just there are so many of
them on the market that you can have as personal
points of presence or hotspots on your own and
With these I find myself talking to somebody
who has a DMR radio and on my display instead
of a call sign I will see their subscriber ID
or a D star radio can pop up or a p25 And within
the networks you now have this concept to steal
from the Star Trek world of the universal translator.
So now you're looking at what do I want in the
way of audio and what do I want my terminal radio
experience to be? Do I want something with a
color touch screen or am I happy with something
that just has 32 channel talk group combinations
set up that doesn't have a display at all. Those
are different possibilities that are there from
one of the extremes to the other. And I think
with these bridges and rooms and connectivity
that we have within the networks, I don't know
that it's going to be all that important that
there be just one standard. And I often tell
people, it's not a religion, you don't have to
pick just one. Somebody asked me the other day
how many digital voice radios I have, and I said,
well, I have something for every methodology
that's arrived. And I started to count, and it
became embarrassing when I got to 30. And I thought,
wait a minute, how did I buy this many radios?
When did I get this many radios? Why did I buy,
you know. But of course, you know, do I, did
I knew, do I need another radio? Well, of course
you do. It's ham radio. And, and that's what
has happened between a collection of mobiles
and portables. I have 30 radios that cover T
25 next in DMR D star and fusion. Wow. So now
with bridges, you might be able to sell some
of those, right? And then you can buy more. That's
right. That's right. Because nobody's standing
still, you know, all this all this stuff. Wow.
Well, Corey, we're just about out of time here.
So we want to finish things up. But I appreciate
you coming on and, and giving us a good technical
comparison of all of these different technologies
and of course focusing on system fusion tonight
and making people a little more aware of what's
going on out there. Absolutely. It's been my
pleasure. Thank you for having me on. All right.
Well, thanks for doing that. We appreciate it.
That's our guest, Corey Sickles, WA3UVV. And
I guess our call of the night goes to... The
only call of the night, that's Neil Sly, KC9CJL,
and tonight's prize is a BM -17 dual side headset
for EMCOM from Heil Sound. So Neil, I'll get
with you and get that shipped out to you, and
congratulations on that. And all summer long
we'll be giving away various items from Radio
Waves and from Heil Sound, so congratulations
to you on that. get that out to you. So that
is a wrap for this week's edition of HamTalk
Live. Thanks to Corey Sickles, WA3UVV, and everyone
out there in cyberspace for listening and calling
in. And I'll invite you back next Thursday. But
remember, it's a special time, 8 a .m. Eastern
Time, 1200 Zulu, when Ed Durant, DD5LP, will
bring us some of the organizers and competitors
live from the World Radio Sport Team Champions.
Hotel in Wittenberg, Germany just before the
opening ceremony so you and I will have a chance
to talk to all of them with Ed's help and so
we hope that you will call in for that as well
and for a list of all of our upcoming guests
be sure to visit HamTalkLive .com and if you
like our show please leave us a review on iTunes
or wherever you listen that just helps people
find us a little bit faster. So for now, this
is Neil Rapp, WB9VPG, saying seven three, seven
five, and as always, may the good DX be yours.