Day one on a new DMR radio.
First impressions: when the sound quality is good, it's just fine.
No noise, but you do get dropouts. I'm sure that's the quality of
the DMR voice encoder/decoder and not specific to my radio.
I have a Baofeng / Radioddity RD-5R, purchased on sale for less than
$60. Build quality is fine out of the box.
Programming the radio was the first task. I had previously obtained
a DMR ID from RadioID.net so that step was taken care of.
The programming software is from
Radioddity
and runs on Windows only. Helpfully I acquired a little old laptop
running Windows 7 so I was able to run it. The code plug I'm
using is from W8XM and is distributed via the ARROW club at
the Arrow group on groups.io.
Some mysteries to address while they are still mysterious.
Every so often the radio light turns green, presumably
because there's a call on the repeater, but I don't hear
anything. I'm told there is a "monitor" mode where you
open up the radio to listen to this traffic, but I haven't
found it yet.
The code plug is programmed for a "Parrot" server, a sort of
echo test that lets you check levels and hear the sound of
your own voice.
There should be a way to tune in to an arbitrary channel,
and this code plug has a slot for "TS2 Custom" which looks
like where I'd do that. I haven't sorted out how yet.
I've had conversations on the W8RP.local channel (to W8XM)
and on the statewide Michigan channel (to several folks who
were helpful in radio testing). In addition I've listened
to the TAC310 group which is a bit random but evidently useful.
The radio also supports analog UHF/VHF repeaters in the area
and has a broadcast FM receiver just like the Baofeng UV-5R.
So you can listen to your favorite broadcast station and then
have the radio cut in with traffic.
