I got my amateur radio class mostly for college...

shit codec

It does sound like shit. But it won because its an open standard. ICOM, yaesu, and Kenwood where greedy kikes and each tried to own digital with their own incomparable proprietary codec's. A few people actually fell for the D-Star meme.

It also helps that there is a ton of MotoTRBO gear out there and now the chinks are making DMR radios for 70bux.
Here is the netwatch on one of the bigger DMR networks. During the day it's jamming wile the FM repeater networks are ghost towns.
trbo.org/cBridge/netwatch.html

The simplex data and "texting" capabilities is one part of DMR that is not completely shit. The TDMA part is completely not shit. Being able to run 2 separate voice conversations or voice and data at the same time on a single freq is neat.

*incompatible

You've done the Australian Foundation Licence, I see.


Something neat I go up and going last night-- all the click-and-drool... I mean.. cool kids.. are flooding the air with the FT8 mode atm. There's nothing anything really new about it-- except giving a One-Click-Install download for Windows users. (There's a QRSS guy crying because his area of the hobby required a little bit of /effort/ to start with.)

Anyway, I'd been ignoring FT8 because of its Normie Fad appeal, but I did have a go at trying to compile the source for WSJT-X, and actually got it to build. (Which was unexpected, given that Hams always use some fucking shit Windows IDE/environment. Something I looked at a few days ago was written in 2017, in goddamn Borland Turbo C++)

Okay, I am slightly impressed now that WSJT-X could get Russian and Spanish stations with just a cheap handheld SW radio using its telescope antenna.

Kenwood hopped on the dstar meme now too actually.

..for college? I'd like to know what that's about. (Admission credit?)

This, its one of the tightest circlejerks in existence. They'll hunt you down by triangulating your location, kick down your door and basically SWAT you for intruding on their sekrit boomer club

mount a radio transmitter on a quadcopter and use it to troll hamplanets

I joined for the fun of it, the appeal of ham radio is that it's an independent source for communication when all else fails. also, radios can sometimes operate in cell-phone dead-zones.

If you really want to get transmit distance out of your setup, that's the part where it gets expensive. VHF/UHF bands have most of their activity through repeaters, those bands don't have much simplex activity aside from the ARRL band-plan freqs. simplex gets most of it's activity through the HF and lower bands, and the entry-level base stations are easily $1100+ USD. if you just want to listen to HF or lower, make a long-wire antenna and hook it up to a shortwave radio with something simple.

if you really wanna shitpost or listen to shitposts on the airwaves, 7.2mhz 14.313mhz and 3.699mhz will be your best bets. some hams are autistic about the law, but really the FCC comes after you only if you transmit without a callsign, spam the airwaves, or operate with power levels so high that your neighbors' TV speakers start outputting your broadcasts.


VE7KFM, is that you? probably not, but I would be amused if he actually uses 8ch

Well I guess we will see how far that goes. They also make DMR radios.

1st gen Mototrbo (dmr) repeaters are starting to hit the 2nd hand market bigly and that seems to be a driving factor pushing the armatures to DMR over anything else.
Also the chinks actually pulled off a decent little dmr portable with the TYT Tytera MD-380. 90bux and it comes with the programming cable.
Repeaterfags are cheap. DMR is popular not because its open but because it's the most affordable.


They are down to 1 enforcement officer for all of new england. They dont even bust radio pirates on the broadcast bands now unless there is a serious interference issue.
FCC is to busy sucking cellular carrier cock to worry about that happens on the ham bands.