Looks like I'm making a trade for a UHF Motorola XPR6500 just wanted to see if anyone was on the TRBO network?  Looks like the CS700 is a inexpensive way in if anyone is interested at under $200 for a digital / analog radio.

Travis

I am looking forward to see what Yeasu does with their c4fm and DR1 repeater system.

It's popular around here, I see an equal mix of CS700s/Moto/Standard HTs floating around that all seem to be somewhat similar. Not really my thing, I'm in to simple/cheap/standardized/widespread, which in this town is UHF FM followed by VHF FM.

I will say that the folks who run TRBO love it, and will talk your ear off all day long about it. If you've got any 900 repeaters in your area, hop on one and ask.

Our local trbo network is on UHF so will be able to use the radio both on UHF conventional and that system as well as the commercial channels I'm on.  Made a trade for a VHF XTS3000 I picked up cheap for a UHF XPR6500.

Although Yaesu is generally my choice of radios, the really should have decided to come out with a compatible digital format, either DMR, P25 or D-Star.



It'll be a decade or more before we see who wins the "digital coms" war.

With the price coming down significantly on the trbo I can see it jumping ahead.  Now if it stays that way I don't know.

Travis, I'm using a CS700, Seems like a great radio for the money.
DMR-MARC network is well represented across the Kansas side with several repeaters, haven't looked into KCMO

Waiting on the CS-7000…I think that one will be the big game changer. My local TRBO repeater is 70 cm.

Haven't hear a peep out of connect systems.  Curious if it will be released this year or not.

I run it here and it is pretty neat.  The capabilities and talk groups seem to keep expanding.

How do you like the cs700 I'm considering picking one up in Dayton.

I'm willing to be you a dozen donuts and a solar panel that their stuff will NEVER be compatible with DMR...

That is what I am thinking too. We just put up a dr1 repeater too.

This is worst than the vhs-betamax debacle because there are about 8 different setups and none of them talk to each other. (And excluding codec2 none are free)

If they spoke to common servers (Reflectors in D-Star parlance) that would go a long way towards opening the standards back up.

As it is, all these different digital standards (with the exception of DVFree) do more to fragment the community than to enable communications.

I am sure that in the end, there will be a betamax, a VHS, and then in 1 years, a new protocol will come along that makes them both obsolete.



 

The sad thing about this is that these modes (P25, DStar, and DMR) all pretty much use the same vocoder chip.  The packet/transport protocol for all three are open standards, but the vocoder is not.  In this age of micro controllers/computers, someone could make a small box with a small display, some buttons, a microphone socket, and bluetooth connectivities to let me use the front panel or an app to configure the "box" for whichever mode I want to talk to.  I then tune the radio appropriately, and plug this magic box in to the data port - BOOM 3 digital modes on any radio with a 9K6 port.  Heck, even better if your radio supports CAT control.

In the year of 2014, where SDR is nearly king, I still have to deal with the fact that Icom only graciously allows 722 DR memory channels on the ID-51.  There is not enough memory on the radio to store the entire list of DStar repeaters and hotspots for the US on the stupid radio in 2014!  So, my point being that I'm not totally surprised that my magic box above doesn't exist...

Maybe someone should tell them that memory isn't big or expensive anymore...