A short while ago, the new Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W was announced. The original Pi Zero and the Zero W are widely used in MMDVM based hotspots and the new Zero 2 W is a direct, drop in replacement. The most obvious question is whether you need to replace your Pi Zero with a […]
Category: D-STAR
How to automatically link your Pi-Star hotspot to D-Star or YSFReflectors
I noticed recently that sometimes my D-Star based MMDVM Pi-Star hotspot would unlink itself overnight from any reflector it was linked to and I decided to investigate and see if I could work out a way to automatically link it to a reflector. If I can’t stop my Pi-Star MMDVM from disconnecting then at least […]
How to update and upgrade your Pi-Star based hotspot
There are a couple of methods of updating a Pi-Star based MMDVM hotspot, one upgrades Pi-Star itself and the other method does a full operating system update as well as Pi-Star. The Pi itself automatically runs a process overnight that updates the host file and various other things but this is how to do a […]
How to enable cross band repeater on an Icom ID-5100E
How to enable cross band repeater mode and extended transmit on the Icom ID-5100E
A quick tip for your hotspots
With all the hotspots I have in the house for various modes, I decided to do something about the RF. They all run very low power but they’re only for me to use and I didn’t want the RF escaping the house. I bought a few tiny little dummy loads from eBay and replaced the […]
How to set up a Yaesu System Fusion reflector (YSFReflector)
Over the last four or five years I’ve been a regular user of two digital voice modes, D-STAR and DMR. I don’t particularly like to use them to work ‘DX’ but they both have their advantages regarding linking repeaters together and allowing me to keep in touch with people when I’m away from home. Both […]
Building an MMDVM hotspot on a budget
I bought myself a new handheld at the Newark rally earlier this year, an Anytone AT-D878UV to use on DMR. When I went on holiday in October, I took a couple of copies of RadCom with me and in one of them there was a review of my handheld. The author mentioned that he’d used […]
Installing a radio into my car
About a year ago I changed my car and it’s taken a while to get around to fitting the radio into it. I’ve missed having a wireless in the car and recently resorted to keeping a handheld in the glove box so at least I could natter on the local repeater while driving around town. […]
DMR – My thoughts about Digital Mobile Radio
I’ve written a couple of times in the past about various digital voice modes and if I’m honest, I’ve been quite scathing of them. I make no secret of the fact that I’m very happy to use repeaters for local natter but don’t like the idea of linking remote repeaters together via the internet to […]
Are you transmitting illegally on 70cms?
An interesting subject came up on our 70cms voice repeater earlier today following an incident on a local DMR box yesterday and it got me thinking. There are a lot of 70cms repeaters in the UK with input frequencies between 430 MHz and 431 MHz and many people don’t realise that our licence only allows […]
