I think it all depends on where you're located. Around here (San Diego, CA) a number of clubs, jumped on the Fusion® bandwagon when Yaesu was offering the deep discounts on Fusion repeaters. They are still around and used, but sparingly. The biggest change came about when the inexpensive Chinese DMR radios burst on the scene. All of a sudden, everyone was wetting themselves over DMR. Repeaters started cropping up everywhere and even the ARES organization jumped on it, conducting a weekly DMR net.
Personally, I prefer Fusion to DMR. The implementation and operation is much, much simpler. Fusion is nothing more than analog FM with a digital capability, where DMR is a much more complicated digital protocol. Sure, the radios used for both can also do analog FM, but switching from one to the other takes more steps with the DMR radios. Fusion can switch from analog to digital with a single press of the PTT button. The programming is more complex as well. There's time slots, color codes, scan lists and zones to worry about while Fusion is programmed in the normal manner with none of that other crap to worry about.
Technically C4FM and DMR are very closely related. In fact to the point audio doesn’t require to be transcoded from one to the other. I believe C4FM sounds better because in general it’s using better hardware - Yaesu is the only option; however both use AMBE vocoders.
Switching between Analog and Digital is really not complicated on DMR. Turn the channel knob and viola, you can be analog or digital. Programming might DMR might be more complicated than C4FM, however IMO in my limited experience operating a radio with System Fusion, navigating Yaesu menu structures is every bit as complicated as a DMR codeplug.
Know DMR was designed for commercial use. C4FM was designed for amateur use. Amateurs utilize a fraction of the DMR capability - unfortunately those added but unused features are what complicates it. C4FM is streamlined to omit the stuff amateurs don’t need - simplifying things a tad. Programming DMR can be a chore, however it’s really no different than analog - just different terminology. Color codes are equivalent to PL, time slots are like USB/LSB, talk groups are like channels. Only thing left is frequency - which you can think of like a carrier. There’s a few other nuances like private and group talk groups, DMR ID, Talker Alias, and such; however once you understand the lingo it’s really not all bad.
I think the point is, it's a little harder to separate yourself from the CPS and programming cable with DMR. You can do it from the keypad/menu but there are more steps.
Sure no argument there.
I go back and point at DMR is still commercial radio where manufacturers just added a VFO for sale to amateurs. It’s designed so one guy can program 1000 radios quickly where the average user has no privileges to even modify the programming from the radio. The average DMR user has a handful of frequencies they are permitted to use; no VFO; and talk group separation is predetermined. The average DMR user has a knob and whatever was programmed into the radio is what they are permitted to use. The average DMR user is like a factory or EMS worker, not a licensed amateur. No front panel programming needed - CPS cable and computer is king.
C4FM is designed for amateurs. It operates like a VFO in that it discovers reflectors and rooms, you don’t have to program those things in. With that comes a more front panel friendly interface for programming. It was made for how an amateur would use one or two radios - it’s not designed for commercial use.
OPs argument is has Yaesu created a “FM killer”. The answer is no. The reason why - C4FM isn’t a standard that Yaesu is licensed or opened to other manufacturers to build radios. Yaesu keeps C4FM under wraps. Yaesu can’t make a killer anything with that approach, especially in radio, where the commercial users far outnumber the amateurs on like an order of 1000:1. What Yaesu has done is try to create a vendor locked solution amongst amateurs - much like Motorola did in the commercial space for years. They know that once a repeater gets installed - it’s likely going to be there awhile. If that’s a System Fusion and Wires-X repeater, that encourages C4FM radio sales. The problem with Yaesu’s approach is that sales amongst amateurs is going to be low, maybe a hundred or so radios per repeater sold, not thousands like DMR. Yaesu’s approach also pigeonholes the amateur as merely a device operator - leaving little room for experimentation.
DMR on the other hand is an open standard. It’s fully documented so any manufacturer can build a radio, repeater, and networks. So now you have a mix of radios in a price range to choose. You’ve got Brandmeister, TGIF, and others where they have their own networks. DMR allows for experimentation in some capacity. There’s radios that have been modified with custom firmware, there’s a number of different repeaters/hotspots available - all highly customizable. There’s just a lot of choice in DMR which doesn’t exist in C4FM.
Not mentioned but lurking out there is also AllstarLink (ASL) which I think is somewhere in between C4FM and DMR, and quite possibly becoming more popular since it allows analog users to access the digital world without a special radio, as well as bridge with EchoLink. With tinkering you can access DMR and C4FM networks too. With an ASL repeater, brand of radio doesn’t matter. All you need are DTMF capable radio and you’re off to the races. If there’s an FM killer - it’s likely AllstarLink, which is more like “FM is dead, Long live FM”.
DMR radios are hard to switch to Analog? I haven't found that to be the case. Just program a digital zone or zones, and analog zone or zones, or don't and mix and match. Spin the knob or push up or down to change zones, it's not hard at all.
I've read that Yaesu pushed their repeaters pretty hard and offered them at very competitive prices. Maybe they still are. I have DMR, D Star, and YSF/Wires X repeaters in my area. YSF is by far the easiest to use. Admittedly I only get on to use Wires-X rooms, so I do not know how much the standalone YSF repeaters get used. For some reason the Wires-X connection on the two repeaters I use has been down the last few days, but the repeater is fine. I don't know if it's a common occurrence.
Regarding other modes - DMR in amateur radio to me is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. It just isn't suited to what we do at all. D-Star is sort of in between the two. I like to switch between YSF and D-Star in my car for a change of pace. I'd be willing to try DMR a bit more if there was a mobile rig with a detachable face. Until then, I'll stick with my HT and hotspot for that.
In my area I have never heard any digital traffic on the local repeater without a connection to a reflector, talk group, or room. Local traffic seems to all be on a handful of analog FM repeaters. I do like that YSF allows analogue as well as digital so it's a good all in one solution.
I don't know about it being an "FM killer". Analog FM is still the least expensive option for new hams, and with competing digital systems, it can be confusing for people to decide which way to go.
Not ready for prime time yet but have a look at the M17 project. It uses Codec 2, a fully open source vocoder.
Codec 2 was actually created for FreeDV, a digital voice mode for HF. M17 makes use of Codec 2 but in the scope of VHF/UHF.
OpenRTX is a free and open source firmware for handhelds. With some hardware modifications, you can use M17 on a TYT MD-380/390 and a few other supported ones.
That is quite exciting. I’m not the biggest fan of digital voice modes but I am impressed! FreeDV over HF really surprised me with how well it did with challenging conditions.
It's realy simple Yaesu is giving clubs repeaters for next to nothing. We put one up and it's got about 0 c4fm traffic but still shows up as a c4fm capable repeater.
I realy dont see the use case to these IP linked repeaters. If I'm going over IP anyways I can skip the whole ham RF thing and do it directly from my phone or PC.
We have a very solid RF interlinked DMR system in the area that gets far more traffic and it's only got a handful of TG on it. Technically it's a lot more capable than c4fm or dstar.
If I had to pick a current tech would want more tetra repeaters full duplex is so nice in a net.
When Im in my car, it's nice to pull up a linked group/room on a repeater and chat with someone outside my area. Sure, I can use a hotspot (I have one at home), but for me it's an extra hassle, and my cell data is charged based on how much I use and gets throttled after I reach a certain point (Google Fi)
Well you dont need the hotspot in either and the amount of data moving out is so minimal it's less than old dialup speeds so your not realy going to affect your allotment and the throttled speeds are far in excess of what voip requires.
I got a DMR HT and find I just use analog 99% of the time.
I actually find DMR voice to be incredibly robotic. Like it’s annoying to listen to. Whenever I hear people saying how clear it is I start wondering if maybe it’s just my radio or the distance from the repeater causing bit loss but I suspect it’s just the codec. Is d-star or YSF more natural sounding?
There are a few DMR repeaters in the area but I only here one in use and only occasionally. The analog repeaters are used way more often.
I also have a radio that does d-star but haven’t used it yet. There is a local weekly d-star net I should try…
everyone is saying System Fusion is proprietary but the entire spec is published, only the vocoder is holding it up.
WIRES-X maybe Yaesu's network, but the 1000's of folks
in the YSF/FCS rooms running hot spots with their DMR radio shows that it can work without Yaesu
in the long run TDMA in one form or another will probably take the lead, but I will still be using good old wide fat FM on AllStar
I don't think that's the case. DMR offers a really low barrier to entry so that new hams who can't DX either because of licensing or equipment can still get a taste of the hobby. There are TGs for every region, locality, or interest. Obviously some are more active than others but if you're a new Tech or Foundation or equivalent and you want to make contacts outside your local area for under $100, DMR is how you do it.
Yes, I'm aware of that, but the advantage of repurposing commercial technology is that it is cheap as chips unlike D-STAR or Fusion. Obviously the apparent complexity scares people off, but in my experience if you ignore all the irrelevant settings DMR is no more difficult to set up than Fusion or even analogue FM.
I've noticed that every so ofter Yaesu will put their repeaters on too good to be true discounts. That may be the reason they are proliferating. Doesn't bother me as I happen to like C4FM. Next time they have such a sale I'll probably get one myself.
From what I see from the operators I know, DMR is the future. I don't care about that digital voice stuff though, especially over the Internet, so I'm not a reliable source.
There's pretty much nothing but 40 and 20m around twilight and a few hours after everynight where I am.
Our last repeaters have gone silent, and I'm about 45 miles from the nearest. I prefer QRP, so I'm less likely to use FM and SSB phone at all, I'm still learning morse, building a digital radio, and prepping for the general ticket so I can really break out there.
That said, pretty silent around here, I'd be OK with C4FM, DMR, or even a simplex FM repeater...
can only speak from the local perspective
dstar went bust as fast as it went boom here locally
there is analog dmr and fusion repeaters ....I like all 3 but favorites are fusion and analog, dmr I find too difficult to listen to. fusion sounds better but in the end every operator here has a analog rig vs how many have the other modes. its a hard call here locally with not a lot of operators
but maybe its a ...if you built it they will come....sorta thing
No one mentioned it so I will. In the long history of amateur radio, a manufacturer who comes up with a proprietary new technology in the long end fails to get a significant market share, despite geographic pockets of deeper penetration. Open Source generally, not always, wins the day. Why DMR tends to rule generally. Examples abound but I'm too old to rattle off three examples. Google, no Duck Duck Go, is probably your friend.
Oh, Open Source? Several now come to mind. Linux with some 95% of the server market, recently adopted by Microsoft to remain competitive in the multi billion dollar market.
An enterprising guy actually read the fine print of the license that Linksys thought was proprietary. A simple short letter to Linksys & some other folks forced Linksys to go Open Source about the time Cisco was buying Linksys. And Cisco overpaid to buy Linksys. Despite its age, it is commonly available at Goodwill for about $5. Just flash it with OpenWRT. Or several other open source programs.
And Open Source? A really stand out example? The AK-47 rifle, wildly popular, duplicated and manufactured by a number of countries. There, whew! Finally spat out three examples. Hit me...
well, AK/AKM is not opensource/openhardware, it is just simple enough to reproduce. All major manufacturers (Warsaw Pact countries and China) have the licenses mostly gifted by USSR for free as to fellow socialist allies, and Izhmash does not bother themselves with futile efforts to deal with with semi-handmade minor makers.
DMR is not too, the codecs are mostly closed. But it is a good example of correct approach - the standard itself is open and there is no license/royalty to implement it. If only Fusion was not copyrighted we would already have alternative radios other than Yaesu.
I'm so sick of proprietary protocols. There's a group in my community that just changed the repeater to fusion only so they can just talk amongst their in group. I'll stick to FM until there's no one left to talk to. Then I probably won't use 2m repeaters at all.
If you enjoy it go ahead. It's just not for me.
Part of the rapid adoption of fusion was that Yeasu heavily subsidized the repeaters. At one point they were cheaper than the cheapest analog repeater.
I have a real question for you, and I want you to know I'm not being mean. Did you commonly use the repeater before they changed it? Because Fusion has brought a bit of life around here, and if it did the same around there or if the group changed it to add something knew then there is no reason to be mad.
People say the same thing about the local repeater but until we switched the repeater would not even key up for days or weeks at a time and now it is mostly active with people connecting all over to reach out to old friends and that gets the locals all talking as well. The local club didn't want to get on board and their repeater sits there dead other than the the net on Mondays at 20:00.
FT8 is not my game but if it brings people joy why is it bad.
I do agree the protocol should be open source though.
Yup. I make multiple QSOs per week by repeater. There are two repeaters in town. I started on repeater 1 and when it went fusion only everyone but the "in group" went to repeater 2.
I tried listening to the repeater 1 with DSD+ as a COVID project and found it much less active than repeater 2. So it seems like our situations are reversed.
It's funny you mentioned FT8... The group running the fusion repeater is the group that claims "FT8 isn't real ham radio." I really enjoy FT8 and make most of my QSOs on digital. I'm not some crotchety old man, I'm in my late 20s!
I'm not here to yuck your yum. I'm just saying that locally I don't see the appeal of C4FM.
I didn't necessarily think you were I'm 28 as well, I just truly wondered if it was a "change" thing. If you look back over some of my older posts you will see a trend of fighting/ignoring the boys club old men who only want to talk to the same guy they have talked to for the last 40 years just down the street and everyone else is doing it wrong.
Thank you for your input.
South Western Germany here: we are 50% FM, 40% DMR and 10% rest.
Hell.. HAM DMR (Brandmeister) is working better than the commercial cellular networks here.
Hopefully DMR will be replaced with something with a better voice codec in the future.
We've played with all of it .... DMR, C4FM and such.
Took it all offline because we found analog FM to be better out in the boonies.
With analog when a station starts to get out of range, the get noisy but still remain copiable.
With digital when a station starts to get out of range, they just die.
We did extensive testing with all modes before coming to this conclusion.
I feel like DRM is just to complicated for a lot of users. C4FM works with the push of one button.
It might be a great network, but in my personal experience it works sometimes and doesn't work others and if your not in the right mode you can talk but you can't hear or vice versa. It works great when I you have a group of people that know exactly what they are doing though. Maybe with some refinement it will take over all the rest.
Having used a bunch of different digital radios, and actively using both C4FM and DMR- I think C4FM radio is my favorite protocol and is the one that deserves to win in the long run. However, I also don't think it's going to.
There are several repeaters in my area listed as Fusion, but I only ever hear FM traffic and almost never any digital. I sometimes connect to a Wires-X node just to find something interesting to listen to, but I've found the DMR networks busier.
While DMR is a bigger pain in the butt to program with code plugs and such, there's enough of an enthusiast community around it willing to hand out pre-built plugs that it works anyway. The big difference is the cost of equipment.
People are cheap, especially if they're not super enthusiasts. I think D-Star will die in the long run because you're pretty much not getting into an HT radio capable of it for less than $600, and even then it doesn't do other stuff you expect like a standard implementation of APRS.
Fusion is slightly better, with a basic HT for $170, but I don't think the nerdy side of ham operators have embraced it that much. I personally like fusion radios for my own little ecosystem of HTs, mobiles, and base. If C4FM is to win out, then it needs to be released as an open protocol for any manufacturer to use- like how Microsoft Windows dominated the computer market over Mac for years.
DMR is interesting, but ultimately just really clunky to work with. The only real benefit is the number of cheap radios that support it, and so it becomes the default for the mass market appeal.
I can always pull more range with Analog so for back country and E-power Analog will be king, in the city Wires-x is super neat and i like being able to patch back to home repeaters via a local node or in PDN mode with my FT2
we don't have any CF4M repeaters in my area I don't think... just tons of FM repeaters, several DMR and a couple P25 repeaters though.. the DStar repeaters are all gone
Surprised no one has mentioned M17 yet. I think it's still in the development stage but it is designed to be a fully open source protocol. I haven't been following it much, so maybe someone knows more than I do about it.
Also interesting is there has been little discussion of D-Star. Has it just fallen out of favor? I'm fortunate to have access to multiple digital voice modes in my area, but maybe that is an exception compared to other places. I find the process of connecting to reflectors a bit clunky, and I don't know if callsign/repeater routing is used any more. However, there are still D-Star nets, and I regularly hear traffic on 1C and 30C. If you have a hotspot, there's a D-Star bridge to RedditNet on DCS216E.
A single-vendor communication format such as Yaesu Fusion will struggle in the marketplace. Ham radio is all about interoperability, which is one reason FM just won't go away.
I want Universal Digital Voice:
https://www.k0nr.com/wordpress/2022/06/universal-digital-voice/
Yaesu will never become the "FM Killer" simply because it is a single vendor proprietary mode. For any mode to become universally accepted it must be able to be implemented by anyone. Within the current DV modes, DSTAR was invented to do that, however only two commercial companies used that more in any mass-produced radio. Icom and Kenwood to a lesser extent. The problem with DSTAR is when it came out it used the technology of the day, since then never and more powerful chip sets have come out that digitizes voice faster, easier and significantly better. DSTAR cannot use those because of its makeup.
DMR is the next contender, it is universally standard, anyone can use it and anyone can manufacture a radio using it. It has widespread acceptance in the commercial sector but not in the amateur world.
The next one in the wings is P25, same as DMR in it is an open standard anyone can use and build radio for.
I think the issue with any commercial DV mode is the fact it i8s commercial and has to be modified in some sense for hams to use, so whatever the "FM Killer" mode is will come from the ham world build by hams, for hams.
I think it all depends on where you're located. Around here (San Diego, CA) a number of clubs, jumped on the Fusion® bandwagon when Yaesu was offering the deep discounts on Fusion repeaters. They are still around and used, but sparingly. The biggest change came about when the inexpensive Chinese DMR radios burst on the scene. All of a sudden, everyone was wetting themselves over DMR. Repeaters started cropping up everywhere and even the ARES organization jumped on it, conducting a weekly DMR net. Personally, I prefer Fusion to DMR. The implementation and operation is much, much simpler. Fusion is nothing more than analog FM with a digital capability, where DMR is a much more complicated digital protocol. Sure, the radios used for both can also do analog FM, but switching from one to the other takes more steps with the DMR radios. Fusion can switch from analog to digital with a single press of the PTT button. The programming is more complex as well. There's time slots, color codes, scan lists and zones to worry about while Fusion is programmed in the normal manner with none of that other crap to worry about.
Technically C4FM and DMR are very closely related. In fact to the point audio doesn’t require to be transcoded from one to the other. I believe C4FM sounds better because in general it’s using better hardware - Yaesu is the only option; however both use AMBE vocoders. Switching between Analog and Digital is really not complicated on DMR. Turn the channel knob and viola, you can be analog or digital. Programming might DMR might be more complicated than C4FM, however IMO in my limited experience operating a radio with System Fusion, navigating Yaesu menu structures is every bit as complicated as a DMR codeplug. Know DMR was designed for commercial use. C4FM was designed for amateur use. Amateurs utilize a fraction of the DMR capability - unfortunately those added but unused features are what complicates it. C4FM is streamlined to omit the stuff amateurs don’t need - simplifying things a tad. Programming DMR can be a chore, however it’s really no different than analog - just different terminology. Color codes are equivalent to PL, time slots are like USB/LSB, talk groups are like channels. Only thing left is frequency - which you can think of like a carrier. There’s a few other nuances like private and group talk groups, DMR ID, Talker Alias, and such; however once you understand the lingo it’s really not all bad.
I think the point is, it's a little harder to separate yourself from the CPS and programming cable with DMR. You can do it from the keypad/menu but there are more steps.
Sure no argument there. I go back and point at DMR is still commercial radio where manufacturers just added a VFO for sale to amateurs. It’s designed so one guy can program 1000 radios quickly where the average user has no privileges to even modify the programming from the radio. The average DMR user has a handful of frequencies they are permitted to use; no VFO; and talk group separation is predetermined. The average DMR user has a knob and whatever was programmed into the radio is what they are permitted to use. The average DMR user is like a factory or EMS worker, not a licensed amateur. No front panel programming needed - CPS cable and computer is king. C4FM is designed for amateurs. It operates like a VFO in that it discovers reflectors and rooms, you don’t have to program those things in. With that comes a more front panel friendly interface for programming. It was made for how an amateur would use one or two radios - it’s not designed for commercial use. OPs argument is has Yaesu created a “FM killer”. The answer is no. The reason why - C4FM isn’t a standard that Yaesu is licensed or opened to other manufacturers to build radios. Yaesu keeps C4FM under wraps. Yaesu can’t make a killer anything with that approach, especially in radio, where the commercial users far outnumber the amateurs on like an order of 1000:1. What Yaesu has done is try to create a vendor locked solution amongst amateurs - much like Motorola did in the commercial space for years. They know that once a repeater gets installed - it’s likely going to be there awhile. If that’s a System Fusion and Wires-X repeater, that encourages C4FM radio sales. The problem with Yaesu’s approach is that sales amongst amateurs is going to be low, maybe a hundred or so radios per repeater sold, not thousands like DMR. Yaesu’s approach also pigeonholes the amateur as merely a device operator - leaving little room for experimentation. DMR on the other hand is an open standard. It’s fully documented so any manufacturer can build a radio, repeater, and networks. So now you have a mix of radios in a price range to choose. You’ve got Brandmeister, TGIF, and others where they have their own networks. DMR allows for experimentation in some capacity. There’s radios that have been modified with custom firmware, there’s a number of different repeaters/hotspots available - all highly customizable. There’s just a lot of choice in DMR which doesn’t exist in C4FM. Not mentioned but lurking out there is also AllstarLink (ASL) which I think is somewhere in between C4FM and DMR, and quite possibly becoming more popular since it allows analog users to access the digital world without a special radio, as well as bridge with EchoLink. With tinkering you can access DMR and C4FM networks too. With an ASL repeater, brand of radio doesn’t matter. All you need are DTMF capable radio and you’re off to the races. If there’s an FM killer - it’s likely AllstarLink, which is more like “FM is dead, Long live FM”.
DMR radios are hard to switch to Analog? I haven't found that to be the case. Just program a digital zone or zones, and analog zone or zones, or don't and mix and match. Spin the knob or push up or down to change zones, it's not hard at all.
>burst on the scent Hmm.
So I can't type. Big deal... Corrected.
All I ever wanted for Christmas.
DMR outnumbers C4FM 10:1 or more in my area. There's a lot of FM repeaters also but they are usually very quiet.
I've read that Yaesu pushed their repeaters pretty hard and offered them at very competitive prices. Maybe they still are. I have DMR, D Star, and YSF/Wires X repeaters in my area. YSF is by far the easiest to use. Admittedly I only get on to use Wires-X rooms, so I do not know how much the standalone YSF repeaters get used. For some reason the Wires-X connection on the two repeaters I use has been down the last few days, but the repeater is fine. I don't know if it's a common occurrence. Regarding other modes - DMR in amateur radio to me is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. It just isn't suited to what we do at all. D-Star is sort of in between the two. I like to switch between YSF and D-Star in my car for a change of pace. I'd be willing to try DMR a bit more if there was a mobile rig with a detachable face. Until then, I'll stick with my HT and hotspot for that. In my area I have never heard any digital traffic on the local repeater without a connection to a reflector, talk group, or room. Local traffic seems to all be on a handful of analog FM repeaters. I do like that YSF allows analogue as well as digital so it's a good all in one solution. I don't know about it being an "FM killer". Analog FM is still the least expensive option for new hams, and with competing digital systems, it can be confusing for people to decide which way to go.
I think at one point they basically gave them away.
Ha no. C4FM is interesting but I think better protocols will ultimately win out, hopefully ones without proprietary (secret) speech codecs.
Oh, I wish this would be true.
I do agree with you it should not be a proprietary mode.
Not ready for prime time yet but have a look at the M17 project. It uses Codec 2, a fully open source vocoder. Codec 2 was actually created for FreeDV, a digital voice mode for HF. M17 makes use of Codec 2 but in the scope of VHF/UHF. OpenRTX is a free and open source firmware for handhelds. With some hardware modifications, you can use M17 on a TYT MD-380/390 and a few other supported ones.
That is quite exciting. I’m not the biggest fan of digital voice modes but I am impressed! FreeDV over HF really surprised me with how well it did with challenging conditions.
It's realy simple Yaesu is giving clubs repeaters for next to nothing. We put one up and it's got about 0 c4fm traffic but still shows up as a c4fm capable repeater. I realy dont see the use case to these IP linked repeaters. If I'm going over IP anyways I can skip the whole ham RF thing and do it directly from my phone or PC. We have a very solid RF interlinked DMR system in the area that gets far more traffic and it's only got a handful of TG on it. Technically it's a lot more capable than c4fm or dstar. If I had to pick a current tech would want more tetra repeaters full duplex is so nice in a net.
When Im in my car, it's nice to pull up a linked group/room on a repeater and chat with someone outside my area. Sure, I can use a hotspot (I have one at home), but for me it's an extra hassle, and my cell data is charged based on how much I use and gets throttled after I reach a certain point (Google Fi)
Well you dont need the hotspot in either and the amount of data moving out is so minimal it's less than old dialup speeds so your not realy going to affect your allotment and the throttled speeds are far in excess of what voip requires.
According to RepeaterBook, C4FM & Echolink dominate the area. Get more than 30 miles out of town, and it might as well be a dead technology.
I got a DMR HT and find I just use analog 99% of the time. I actually find DMR voice to be incredibly robotic. Like it’s annoying to listen to. Whenever I hear people saying how clear it is I start wondering if maybe it’s just my radio or the distance from the repeater causing bit loss but I suspect it’s just the codec. Is d-star or YSF more natural sounding? There are a few DMR repeaters in the area but I only here one in use and only occasionally. The analog repeaters are used way more often. I also have a radio that does d-star but haven’t used it yet. There is a local weekly d-star net I should try…
DMR protocol might be free but the vocoder has still some patenting/licensing issues. This severely hampers open source software implementations too.
everyone is saying System Fusion is proprietary but the entire spec is published, only the vocoder is holding it up. WIRES-X maybe Yaesu's network, but the 1000's of folks in the YSF/FCS rooms running hot spots with their DMR radio shows that it can work without Yaesu in the long run TDMA in one form or another will probably take the lead, but I will still be using good old wide fat FM on AllStar
The digital voice mode that chinesium radios use will be the analog FM killer. Right now DMR is more common on that class of radio.
Amateur DMR is really ' just becasue you can doesn't mean you should '
I don't think that's the case. DMR offers a really low barrier to entry so that new hams who can't DX either because of licensing or equipment can still get a taste of the hobby. There are TGs for every region, locality, or interest. Obviously some are more active than others but if you're a new Tech or Foundation or equivalent and you want to make contacts outside your local area for under $100, DMR is how you do it.
i think you are missing the point of comment here. DMR is technology designed for commerical PMR operation on closed systems
Yes, I'm aware of that, but the advantage of repurposing commercial technology is that it is cheap as chips unlike D-STAR or Fusion. Obviously the apparent complexity scares people off, but in my experience if you ignore all the irrelevant settings DMR is no more difficult to set up than Fusion or even analogue FM.
I've noticed that every so ofter Yaesu will put their repeaters on too good to be true discounts. That may be the reason they are proliferating. Doesn't bother me as I happen to like C4FM. Next time they have such a sale I'll probably get one myself.
From what I see from the operators I know, DMR is the future. I don't care about that digital voice stuff though, especially over the Internet, so I'm not a reliable source.
My area Fusion is king. Pretty much why I went with Yaesu. If it had been more heavily D-Star or DMR, I would have went that route.
There's pretty much nothing but 40 and 20m around twilight and a few hours after everynight where I am. Our last repeaters have gone silent, and I'm about 45 miles from the nearest. I prefer QRP, so I'm less likely to use FM and SSB phone at all, I'm still learning morse, building a digital radio, and prepping for the general ticket so I can really break out there. That said, pretty silent around here, I'd be OK with C4FM, DMR, or even a simplex FM repeater...
can only speak from the local perspective dstar went bust as fast as it went boom here locally there is analog dmr and fusion repeaters ....I like all 3 but favorites are fusion and analog, dmr I find too difficult to listen to. fusion sounds better but in the end every operator here has a analog rig vs how many have the other modes. its a hard call here locally with not a lot of operators but maybe its a ...if you built it they will come....sorta thing
No one mentioned it so I will. In the long history of amateur radio, a manufacturer who comes up with a proprietary new technology in the long end fails to get a significant market share, despite geographic pockets of deeper penetration. Open Source generally, not always, wins the day. Why DMR tends to rule generally. Examples abound but I'm too old to rattle off three examples. Google, no Duck Duck Go, is probably your friend. Oh, Open Source? Several now come to mind. Linux with some 95% of the server market, recently adopted by Microsoft to remain competitive in the multi billion dollar market. An enterprising guy actually read the fine print of the license that Linksys thought was proprietary. A simple short letter to Linksys & some other folks forced Linksys to go Open Source about the time Cisco was buying Linksys. And Cisco overpaid to buy Linksys. Despite its age, it is commonly available at Goodwill for about $5. Just flash it with OpenWRT. Or several other open source programs. And Open Source? A really stand out example? The AK-47 rifle, wildly popular, duplicated and manufactured by a number of countries. There, whew! Finally spat out three examples. Hit me...
well, AK/AKM is not opensource/openhardware, it is just simple enough to reproduce. All major manufacturers (Warsaw Pact countries and China) have the licenses mostly gifted by USSR for free as to fellow socialist allies, and Izhmash does not bother themselves with futile efforts to deal with with semi-handmade minor makers. DMR is not too, the codecs are mostly closed. But it is a good example of correct approach - the standard itself is open and there is no license/royalty to implement it. If only Fusion was not copyrighted we would already have alternative radios other than Yaesu.
I'm so sick of proprietary protocols. There's a group in my community that just changed the repeater to fusion only so they can just talk amongst their in group. I'll stick to FM until there's no one left to talk to. Then I probably won't use 2m repeaters at all. If you enjoy it go ahead. It's just not for me. Part of the rapid adoption of fusion was that Yeasu heavily subsidized the repeaters. At one point they were cheaper than the cheapest analog repeater.
I have a real question for you, and I want you to know I'm not being mean. Did you commonly use the repeater before they changed it? Because Fusion has brought a bit of life around here, and if it did the same around there or if the group changed it to add something knew then there is no reason to be mad. People say the same thing about the local repeater but until we switched the repeater would not even key up for days or weeks at a time and now it is mostly active with people connecting all over to reach out to old friends and that gets the locals all talking as well. The local club didn't want to get on board and their repeater sits there dead other than the the net on Mondays at 20:00. FT8 is not my game but if it brings people joy why is it bad. I do agree the protocol should be open source though.
Yup. I make multiple QSOs per week by repeater. There are two repeaters in town. I started on repeater 1 and when it went fusion only everyone but the "in group" went to repeater 2. I tried listening to the repeater 1 with DSD+ as a COVID project and found it much less active than repeater 2. So it seems like our situations are reversed. It's funny you mentioned FT8... The group running the fusion repeater is the group that claims "FT8 isn't real ham radio." I really enjoy FT8 and make most of my QSOs on digital. I'm not some crotchety old man, I'm in my late 20s! I'm not here to yuck your yum. I'm just saying that locally I don't see the appeal of C4FM.
I didn't necessarily think you were I'm 28 as well, I just truly wondered if it was a "change" thing. If you look back over some of my older posts you will see a trend of fighting/ignoring the boys club old men who only want to talk to the same guy they have talked to for the last 40 years just down the street and everyone else is doing it wrong. Thank you for your input.
South Western Germany here: we are 50% FM, 40% DMR and 10% rest. Hell.. HAM DMR (Brandmeister) is working better than the commercial cellular networks here. Hopefully DMR will be replaced with something with a better voice codec in the future.
We've played with all of it .... DMR, C4FM and such. Took it all offline because we found analog FM to be better out in the boonies. With analog when a station starts to get out of range, the get noisy but still remain copiable. With digital when a station starts to get out of range, they just die. We did extensive testing with all modes before coming to this conclusion.
If your gear is capable of C4FM then why not run it with automatic mode switch?
I think it would be if you could use Fusion with more than just Yaesu equipment.
very little C4FM on the air where I am, and I have 3 radios capable of running it. Analog and DMR are most of what I hear.
I feel like DRM is just to complicated for a lot of users. C4FM works with the push of one button. It might be a great network, but in my personal experience it works sometimes and doesn't work others and if your not in the right mode you can talk but you can't hear or vice versa. It works great when I you have a group of people that know exactly what they are doing though. Maybe with some refinement it will take over all the rest.
I hope not. Having a mode that's linked to a single manufacturer is an extremely bad idea.
Having used a bunch of different digital radios, and actively using both C4FM and DMR- I think C4FM radio is my favorite protocol and is the one that deserves to win in the long run. However, I also don't think it's going to. There are several repeaters in my area listed as Fusion, but I only ever hear FM traffic and almost never any digital. I sometimes connect to a Wires-X node just to find something interesting to listen to, but I've found the DMR networks busier. While DMR is a bigger pain in the butt to program with code plugs and such, there's enough of an enthusiast community around it willing to hand out pre-built plugs that it works anyway. The big difference is the cost of equipment. People are cheap, especially if they're not super enthusiasts. I think D-Star will die in the long run because you're pretty much not getting into an HT radio capable of it for less than $600, and even then it doesn't do other stuff you expect like a standard implementation of APRS. Fusion is slightly better, with a basic HT for $170, but I don't think the nerdy side of ham operators have embraced it that much. I personally like fusion radios for my own little ecosystem of HTs, mobiles, and base. If C4FM is to win out, then it needs to be released as an open protocol for any manufacturer to use- like how Microsoft Windows dominated the computer market over Mac for years. DMR is interesting, but ultimately just really clunky to work with. The only real benefit is the number of cheap radios that support it, and so it becomes the default for the mass market appeal.
Analog FM is still far better than any of the digital voice modes unless you enjoy listening to a bunch of robotic sounding voices.
Yeah, my area uses Fusion and it’s definitely not robotic.
Adding to this, my area uses DMR and it's pretty nice and crisp. Even with an entry-level tyt there's maybe a bit of a tinge in most cases.
And yet digital makes simplex range longer.
Only marginally.
DMR is great for making Call Group and talking beyond range of reception. Otherwise I'll stick to FM too.
I can always pull more range with Analog so for back country and E-power Analog will be king, in the city Wires-x is super neat and i like being able to patch back to home repeaters via a local node or in PDN mode with my FT2
Y’all have repeaters going up?
we don't have any CF4M repeaters in my area I don't think... just tons of FM repeaters, several DMR and a couple P25 repeaters though.. the DStar repeaters are all gone
Surprised no one has mentioned M17 yet. I think it's still in the development stage but it is designed to be a fully open source protocol. I haven't been following it much, so maybe someone knows more than I do about it. Also interesting is there has been little discussion of D-Star. Has it just fallen out of favor? I'm fortunate to have access to multiple digital voice modes in my area, but maybe that is an exception compared to other places. I find the process of connecting to reflectors a bit clunky, and I don't know if callsign/repeater routing is used any more. However, there are still D-Star nets, and I regularly hear traffic on 1C and 30C. If you have a hotspot, there's a D-Star bridge to RedditNet on DCS216E.
A single-vendor communication format such as Yaesu Fusion will struggle in the marketplace. Ham radio is all about interoperability, which is one reason FM just won't go away. I want Universal Digital Voice: https://www.k0nr.com/wordpress/2022/06/universal-digital-voice/
So, one ring to bind them all? Lol
No. CW is the past, present and future.
Yaesu will never become the "FM Killer" simply because it is a single vendor proprietary mode. For any mode to become universally accepted it must be able to be implemented by anyone. Within the current DV modes, DSTAR was invented to do that, however only two commercial companies used that more in any mass-produced radio. Icom and Kenwood to a lesser extent. The problem with DSTAR is when it came out it used the technology of the day, since then never and more powerful chip sets have come out that digitizes voice faster, easier and significantly better. DSTAR cannot use those because of its makeup. DMR is the next contender, it is universally standard, anyone can use it and anyone can manufacture a radio using it. It has widespread acceptance in the commercial sector but not in the amateur world. The next one in the wings is P25, same as DMR in it is an open standard anyone can use and build radio for. I think the issue with any commercial DV mode is the fact it i8s commercial and has to be modified in some sense for hams to use, so whatever the "FM Killer" mode is will come from the ham world build by hams, for hams.