Ryan OzawaHoping to make use of my amateur radio license again, I picked up an AnyTone AT-878UV radio. Ham radio has gotten a lot more complicated in the last five years. This handset has DMR, which is all the rage. Hope to figure out how to use it! #hamradio #amateurradio
Mark@editor once you get used to DMR and the settings you’ll be fine. I have an Ailunce HD1 which comes in handy to talk to the neighbor island hams, mainland and other countries.
@mark I'll have to come to you for tips! The main selling point of this radio was DMR, but I only have the vaguest sense of what that means. (For what it's worth, my RadioID is 3146151, callsign KH6WEB.)
@editor I assume you’ve got your radio programmed already. If not you’ll need a plugin which I won’t be much help because I manually programmed mine. Usually the hams with similar DMR radios are nice about sharing plugins or you could create your own which I’m sure you’d be able to. Being strictly a Mac user the ability to manually program my radio off the face was why I went with the HD1.
@editor The downside is that I can’t program in user IDs to display calls. At some point when I have more time for it I may pick up a pc laptop just for ham and I’ll be able to program in that stuff and do more digital.
@mark A friend made a codeplug for me which was his local channel and contact list but with my RadioID and call sign in the right places. I borrowed a PC to load it. A friend recommended Bootcamp or Parallels to do it on my Macs. Not being able to add channels just using the handheld was definitely a barrier!
@editor That’s good that your friend gave you a codeplug (I think I said plugin on my last. Been working on a website so my mind was stuck there. Haha). Yeah that’s the drawback of most current DMRs is the necessity to have a computer to program or reprogram which is fine at your QTH but inconvenient out in the field.
@editor Which is the other reason I got the HD1. It came in handy on a hike to scout a SOTA location up Koko Head Stairs. I was able to program in the Maui DMR repeater in the field to try and make DMR contact. Wouldn’t have been able to do that with another radio without a laptop that I would have had to carry up to the summit.