DMR Adventures: Taking the DMR Plunge

---

Having a number of analogue VHF/UHF radios, and spending most/all of my time on HF, I really didn’t see the need to branch into digital VHF/UHF.

A few things fueled my curiosity this past Spring:

• HF SSB voice was not fun. I run QRP+ by choice, like low power energy portable, and I get tired of competing with foot stomping linear activating massive beam stations to just hear one side of a conversation. Cubic $/equipment/power. Yet I missed the conversations
• Almost complete silence of the local analogue repeaters. There was a daily morning 2m net from Port Angeles that was more of a round-table that was nice to hear others during COVID lock down, but it has disappeared from the airwaves. The few other local nets are quite dry (boring cryptic) check-ins, aka I had no interest in taking the time to participate
• Because we were putting our Victoria house on the market, and planned to move to the North Okanagan in BC, I had packed all my HF gear and pulled my EFRW HF antenna down.
• I kept my Kenwood TH-D72 out to maybe play with some APRS, packet, or Winmail. But I ultimately found it not very satisfying, I wanted to hear voices and speak with fellow hams
• I decided to reread up on the non-HF digital modes, including D-Star, Fusion, and DMR. My FT-991A does Fusion, so started there, but I am a many decades Unix and Open-Source user/sysadmin. Zero interest in proprietary software/hardware if possible, particularly running exclusively in the Windows environment. Been burned by lock-in in the past
• Over the years, D-Star has intrigued me, but just couldn’t justify the cost of ICOM D-Star radio that provided the full feature set including high-speed data
• Local ham had an Anytone 878UVII+ for sale that he only used in analogue as support for the local marathon running events. It was pristine and still in its box with a hand mic. The AnytoneUVII+ would be a solid foundation to start my DMR adventures

So went full in studying up on DMR and the Anytone 878 radio, sold myself on the “need” for another radio, and bought the radio with barely a clue of even how to use the radio. Learned it had GPS and BT, worked on APRS & D-APRS, but had no idea how to program it or how to even get on a local DMR repeater. Jumping in the deep end here.

DMR has a steep learning curve between programming the radio, building a hotspot, accessing local repeaters, finding TalkGroups and understanding the flow of QSOs. Sounds like modern Ham Radio, sign me up.

So far DMR has lived up to its billing, provides a DX type of SSB-like voice with a simple low cost HT. Perfect for many hams - apartment dwellers, older hams in assisted living, mobile, or having particular interests to discuss using radio to reach out around the world.