AnyTone AT-D878UV Dual-Band DMR Radio

My radio arrived a few days back as an upgrade to my Yaesu FT-60R - mainly because the Yaesu is analogue only (no DMR), and the AnyTone has as way easier menu navigation to use, 5 programmable buttons, built-in GPS (and APRS), larger 3,100 mAh Li-Ion battery, and channel scanning cannot be any easier. The AnyTone programming software has an incredible amount of tweaks and options you can set for types of squelch, scan options, etc.

That said the Yaesu does have a proper squelch knob, two additional Rx bands, and can transmit as low as 500 mW which is legal on the PMR446 band.

The AnyTone is very similar to the Alinco DJ-MD5 (actually also made by Anytone) equivalent but has an additional programmable button, bigger battery, and 7W max power vs Alinco’s 5W. The manufacturer seems to release additional features through firmware updates which is great. The radio will store 160,000 users in its database (used to show the user name and location details on screen), 4,000 channels, 250 zones, and 10,000 contacts.

What like most though is the absolute ease in setting up Zones (a group of channels that can be named say Marine, Ham, etc) and the ability to use one button to start a scan in that Zone. The up/down rocker button quickly switches between Zones.

I went for DMR (vs Wires, D-STAR) as I have Wires already on my base rig and DMR is growing very fast. This is the best way to learn how it works and to understand what reflectors, talk groups, zones, colour codes, slots, etc are all for. DMR itself is actually very efficient in that a single frequency (channel) is divided into two slots and a radio is only transmitting for every 30ms so that two transmissions can share the same frequency. This means one antenna instead of two at a repeater, half the time in transmission (saves battery) and less bandwidth is used (more efficient frequency band use. And of course digital remains crystal clear up to the limit of its range vs analogue that starts fading and picking up interference (clearer sound).

So it is easy to see why digital is getting popular, but of course, these Internet backbone transmissions around the world quickly disappear if the Internet goes down so analogue (real?) radio should never die out!

See some photos and a video in my album at photos.gadgeteer.co.za/index.p…

#anytone #DMR #hamradio

Bild/Foto

from Beiträge von Danie van der Merwe https://ift.tt/2FHJosR
via IFTTT

Comments