March 19, 2025 • 20 mins
As a follow-up to my first video, I made this new episode that addresses some of the issues with DMR IDs. Most of this video centers around a comment from 1 person on Reddit, who had a few good things to say.
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Reddit Article - https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/comments/1hsdxdu/has_bm_usa_really_stopped_issuing_new_tgs/
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Today's video is sponsored by Lytmi Earbuds. Find their new CozyFit G1 over-the-ears unit here - Official Website Link: https://bit.ly/4hAeHp6 (10% discount with the code: HamRadio2) Amazon Exclusive Discount Link: https://bit.ly/3QjavOk limited offer: $20 off
Reddit Article - https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/comments/1hsdxdu/has_bm_usa_really_stopped_issuing_new_tgs/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, Before we get started, be sure to head over
to ham Radio two dot com forward slash email dash
sign up to join my email list of over nineteen
thousand subscribers, where I like to send emails about upcoming events,
upcoming shopping deals, keep you updated with all the stuff
going on with my videos. Once that list reaches twenty thousand,
(00:21):
I will be doing a giveaway of another HF radio
sign up today and thank you for the support. Some
more updates on DMR, What my thought process is behind DMR,
What I do and don't like about DMR. My original
video titled what is Wrong with DMR hawd a lot
(00:41):
of really good comments. In this video, we're going to
talk about one of those comments that was actually made
on Reddit after the fact, and I shared the video
on Reddit and a couple other things applied to some
other comments. And the original article that was about Brandmeister
not allowing you to create new talk groups anymore is
kind of what spawned this whole thing, and I had
(01:02):
some thoughts on that, so I want to further address
more questions, more thoughts I had. I said in the
first video that was going to make a part two,
and now I'm thinking I probably will make up Part
three at some point in time, but this is part two,
So let's talk about this right now. One thing that
I will say upfront, and I think I misspoke this
(01:24):
in the first video. Okay, I was talking about the
security feature of not Someone was complaining about having to
upload a copy of your license to get a dMRI ID,
and I said, well, that's a security feature so that
nobody can register an ID for you. In that way,
nobody can use your ID. Well, what I meant was
and I think I said it wrong, So apologies for that.
(01:46):
But you have to upload a copy of your license
to radioid dot net to get a dMRI ID, a
seven digit dMRI ID in your call sign name, so
that idea is registered to your call sign. The reason
you have to upload a copy of your license is
that so no one else can register an ID with
your call sign. Now, once that ID is out there,
(02:08):
it's public domain. It's public information. Everyone's going to see
it when you kee up on the DMR network anyway,
So someone could take that ID and enter it into
a radio of theirs and impersonate you the same way
they could do it on a WIRESX network with just
inputting your call sign into their radio the same way
they could do it on a d Star network with
putting your call sign into their radio. So the security
(02:29):
is not preventing someone from using your ID and their radio.
The security is preventing someone from registering a new ID
under your call sign. So I wanted to make that
clear because I think I misspoke or I said that
in the first one, but I said it in a
way that was unclear, So I apologize for that. Well,
this time today, we're going to talk a little bit
(02:49):
more about the DMR ID aspect and how out of
all the digital modes dr DMR is not the only
one that uses IDs instead of call signs. P twenty
five uses IDs instead of call signs. NXDN uses IDs
instead of call signs. Okay, wirez X or a system
fusion wires X and d Star use call signs. And
(03:09):
in my opinion, I think that we should try to
implement a DMR call sign exchange because here's the problem
with Okay, let me, I'm getting ahead of myself. Now,
let me go to this comment, and this is kind
of where it started. This is a repeat of what
we were talking about. DMR is probably the dumbest mode
in HIM radio for the simple fact that every call
sign needs a radio ID assigned for it to work
(03:30):
on any network. First of all, something I did not
mention in the first video is that's an incorrect statement.
It does not need a radio ID to work on
any network. It needs a radio ID to work on
the Brandmeister network. And I gave a couple of points
in my first video about what I didn't like about Brandmeister,
and we're going to talk a little bit more about
that in this video, so keep watching on that. Okay,
(03:53):
I can put any ID into my radio and key
up on a sea bridge network and use it all
day long. There is no ID authentication parameter built into
a c bridge. It's built into Brandmeister. I don't know
if it's built into TGIF. If someone's familiar enough with
TGIF to acknowledge that to put a comment blow, I'd
(04:13):
love to hear the thoughts on that. I would not
be surprised if it is built into TGIF, but I'm
not sure. I'm not sure. I didn't look that up,
so I didn't research that before this recording. But this
is actually required for Brand Meister. And again laid out
a couple of points why I don't like brandmeister in
the first video, and I'm gonna do more of that
coming up, so let's go. My original reply to that was,
(04:36):
every digital mode needs this. D Starr and y sef
use a call sign. DMR uses a number. If you
fail to enter any of those into your radio, you
won't be able to transmit on a network. I don't
see how DMR is any more complicated in others just
because it uses a number rather than your call sign.
That was my original reply, and today's video is going
to sponsor. It's going to focus mostly on this reply
from Zach lab. Now you can see this was twenty
(04:58):
five days ago between that video. In the time, I've
traded some emails with this gentleman. Well, I didn't trade
emails with him, but we've gone back and forth in
here a little bit. I went to Orlando for a
whole week for himcashon and I've been busy with other stuff.
So but I know I wanted to make a video
about this reply here. So he says, Jason, I'm jumping
in from your video. I was also an amateur and
DMR when it first was budding, sometime around twenty twenty ten.
(05:21):
I'm believe I had an XPR eighty three hundred even
before DMR mark came into existence. When we all did
was local IP site connect and Ravennet systems hadn't even
made the sea bridge. Okay, yeah, so that's that's kind
of how the system in Texas started. Also, I wasn't
part of it back then, but I did some research
a few years back, because I did a video at
the Tapper conference five or six years ago, calling and
(05:44):
I called it Understanding DMR Networks. So yes, I'm familiar
with IP site Connect. I know a couple guys who
still use it, so yeah, good to know there. I
used to be one of the few with a three
to five digit DMR mark ID because I wanted to
use radios on both Connect Plus and HAM Radio. We
had some guys like that in our area as well.
I think the point being made, and the point I
(06:04):
would make myself, is that we're not just adding an
extra step and getting on the air. It's that we're
relying on a third party, a closed one that has
no governance or transparency to handle IDs for everybody. Okay,
I take a little bit issue with that, but let's
keep reading amateur specific modes use call signs exclusively as
a now identifier something that has already been issued and
guarantee unique by government entities using their delegated authorities from
(06:26):
the ITU. There's a governing body, people smarter than us
and before our time, that set a call sign fixes
in stone. It delegates prefixes to countries to let them
use with subfixes they saw fit. With dMRI IDs, it's
an extra step of another database registration. Worse yet, we're
letting a private group of individuals control the hobby internationally
for the rest of us with no accountability. I don't
(06:46):
think DMR is more complated than the other modes because
of this extra registration step, but on the reason of private,
unchecked control alone, I agree with the original poster that
DMR and amateur radio is dumb. Okay, couple of things
on that number one, first and foremost, Okay, welcome to
the planet. Okay, everything in the world works this way.
(07:07):
If someone creates something, or invents something, or discovers something,
or brings an aspect of this topic into a new group,
they set up a new way to do this, and
the control aspects and the preferences and the parameters by
which people use the system is set up by the
original founders or original implementers of that system. I mean,
(07:31):
I understand what you're saying. Okay, I get what you're saying,
But I why is that an issue? Okay? Why is
that an issue? Those guys DMR mark was the first
to create an assigned registration of IDs in DMR and
amateur radio, and I wish and it's kind of a
stupid thing. You have to understand that DMR was not
(07:52):
originally designed to use it the way we use it
in amateur radio. It was a design for close quarters use.
The guys ATMAR never really intended it to have like
nationwide and worldwide talk groups. They never really intended to
key up repeaters across such a large area. They intended
it to be used in buildings maybe, and by companies
or schools all within a certain city or county or state,
(08:15):
and you could kind of link everyone together with talk groups,
and you know, you had maybe a dozen talk groups.
I mean, we have thousands of talk groups in DMR
in amateur radio, and I dare say most of them
don't get used. But the point is that this number
registration was it was obvious that when they implemented this
number registration, it was never meant to assign those numbers
(08:36):
to thousands of people, to hundreds of thousands of people.
It was meant for a more of a close quarters
communications system. So I would love to see an upgradeed
DMR to where it implements alpha numeric numbers instead of
just numeric numbers. Because as of right now, we basically,
since your repeater IDs and your talk group IDs are
(08:56):
only up to six digits, okay, basically, you only have
one hundred thousand and six digit IDs that can exist. Okay,
So from zero zero zero zero zero through nine nine nine,
that's one hundred thousand different IDs. So and all repeater
IDs are six digits, so you've only got six You've
only got one hundred thousand of those that can exist
(09:17):
in the world. Even more stringent than that is, all
of the repeaters in the United States, maybe in North
America start with a three to one, so that limits
it even more. Okay, so you're gonna run out of
IDs and talk group numbers at a certain point in
time because guess what, there's just a limited system. If
we had alpha numeric we could combat that issue, and
we could assign call signs, which are already alphanumeric. Case
(09:40):
five HWB is an alpha numeric call sign, and we
could implement that, and we could start naming. We could
start putting IDs or call signs into radios, We could
start putting call signs into repeaters and in the different
parameters and everything like that. So I would be one
hundred percent in favor of something like that. But the
original point mentioned see this, This is zach Labs guy.
(10:01):
He's getting off in a little bit of a tangent here,
and it's not that I really disagree with what he's saying,
But the original point was that the original poster made
DMR's ID because you have to use a number or
you get blocked in the network. Well, first of all,
as I said a minute ago, that's not actually true.
That's only true on Brandmeister. I can input a number
and use it on seabridge all day long. I can
(10:22):
input the number one two, three foot five and use
it on seabridge all day long. There's nothing on the
sea bridge that blocks unregistered numbers. Because the sea bridge
is not tied physically or virtually to RADIOID dot net
at all. I can take I can do a data
dump from radioid dot net and load it into my
sea bridge, or I can just delete everything out of
(10:44):
my sea bridge as far as radio IDs go, and
people can use it with whatever radios or whatever ID
they have. Okay, there's nothing on a sea bridge that
limits that. Brandmeister limits it. But again, in the first video,
I talked about several things I didn't like about Brandmeister,
and I'm gonna e on that in later video. So
again I see where you're coming from, but you're you're
kind of you're taking it in a different direction than
(11:06):
what the original comment said and what I was replying
to with that video. He goes on to say, down
here he gives a brief history which I already knew all
this stuff about how DMR mark came into existence. They
had dci K four, USD Turbo six NorCal NJ Turbo
n E D E c N. I wasn't familiar with that,
(11:27):
and that one following right behind us would tell their
areas to use the same IDs from DMR Mark. DMR
Mark m a RC is the Motorola Amateure Radio Club.
Motorola likes to tell you they invented DMR they didn't.
They were one of the early adopters of DMR, and
they added IP site connect to the repeaters, which is
kind of like an addition to the layer of DMR,
(11:47):
But they didn't invent DMR. DMR is an open standard
developed by European Telecommunications in two thousand and five. I
think it was Motorola was an early adopter of DMR,
but they didn't invent it. So he goes on here
to talk about how the history of the DMR mark
IDs was used, and then this paragraph right here is interesting.
DMR mark was using usids starting with the elevens instead of
(12:08):
thirty one's. Was also about the time GDPR came into play.
That's when Brandmeister made his fuss, made a fuss about both. Eventually,
in twenty twenty, DMR mark CCS seven let Brandmeister take over,
and I think he's talk about Radio ID. Yeah, take
over and have their way with RADIOID dot net. But
it's the same problem again. Brandmeister is controlled by Select
FOREW who ran Fast Forwards. No real governess, no transparency,
(12:29):
another private group of individuals controlling to hobby internationally. Why
would you jump from a leaking ship right onto another
one that's going to take the same water again in
the future. Okay, well, my first video once again was
about how I didn't like brandmeister. So I don't know
who you're arguing with right here, but I mean, I
see what you're saying. I do disagree with you, but
(12:51):
that's you're not arguing a point that I made. Okay,
another thing he says up here, there was never any
governance or transparency, just a good old boys club who
took all the chairs because they got to the party first. Again,
I must state, welcome to the planet. That's how everything works.
Everything in the history of the world works that way,
whether it's good, bad, right or wrong. I'm not saying
I'm just saying that's how it works. The people who
get their first set up parameters, and everybody else uses
(13:12):
that parameter until someone else comes along and says we
should update this and change it, which I would be
one hundred percent in favor of. I have no problem
with that. But the but the fact of registering a
dmr ID and using it in your radio to get
onto a network is not It's not a hard and
complicated process. It's not really a good old boys network
because guess what anyone can read. All you have to
(13:33):
do is have a valid amateur radio call sign and
upload a copyer license, which again I think you should
already have. I made that point in the first video,
so I'm not gonna make it again. Okay, I think
you are should already. I think everyone should have a
copy of their amateur radio license and have it displayed
in their hamshack or the vehicle, or one in your pocket. Okay,
So again I'm not going to go into that again.
(13:55):
But that is I don't understand why it's so difficult
to use an ID instead of a call sign. So
he goes on to talk about p twenty five here
in a minute, and I want to read a couple
of the things he says there. Again, I don't really
I'm not really arguing with this person, this zach Labs person, don't.
I don't think he's wrong, He's just taken it in
a different direction than what I was originally talking about. First,
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video right here. Basically his last kind of thought process
here was I don't use DMR anymore if I can
help it. When I do, it's usually for a public
(15:40):
service event. We're use local repeaters directly linked to each
other with iPSC or similar no bridges involved. I use
an ID issued by non amsure system, not even a
less than FIVEG it issued by DMR, Mark Brandmeister. Brandmeister
does an issue id's you talk about radioid dot net
and Glenn at radioid dot net doesn't have anything to
do with Brandmeister directly, although Brandmeister does limit the people
(16:03):
that can use their network. But again, get me started
on how much I don't like Brandmeister. Okay, so you
don't have that problem with the sea bridge. Now, this
right here is a little bit I don't want to
call I don't want to say hypocritical, but I think
it kind of shoots yourself in the foot right here.
I still use P twenty five to this day, before
the XDS clone amateurs used to use whatever numeric ID
for amateur radio since Astros P twenty five supported Astroid's
(16:26):
soft id's around the same time. Do you mark mente existence.
I've been using that to transmit call sign over the air,
which not only solves ID but also means the numeric
ID doesn't even matter anymore. So you can totally do
that over a sea bridge. Now you're probably gonna get
people coming back to you and say, dude, your id's
not right, just like I made a video a while
back about calling a QRZ on a PODA and never
ID properly. So that's gonna be a thing if you
(16:48):
don't use a proper ID. But the point is that
you're not blocked by a sea bridge if you use
a five digit connect plus ID or just some made
up random number. The C bridge does not block you.
Brandmeister blocks you, but not the seed bridge. Okay, he says,
I never really use d star a fusion, But DMR
remains the only amateur LMR mode where you can transmit
(17:09):
an Alphameric where you can't transmit an Alpha America ID
for a call sign alongside with your voice calls. That's
the reason on top of privately controlled numbering makes me
feel d MAR is not well suited for the amateur
radio to begin with. Okay, you know what, I don't
agree with you, but I understand what you're saying. I
understand what you're saying there. That's fine. Somewhere else in
this article, somewhere, this is the same article I had
(17:29):
in the last video. Somewhere else in this article, someone mentioned, well,
since you're transmitting your call sign on system Fusion and
d STAR, you don't have to ID. That's not true.
That's not true. When digital voice modes first came around,
it was and especially Fusion, because Fusion is twelve and
a half killer hurts and if you use digital narrow
DN mode, then it puts it splits it into two
(17:51):
six point twenty five killer hertz channels, and it uses
voice for one of those channels, and it transmits your
GPS and call sign on the second channel. Okay, DMR
uses voice for bow channels. That's why it's more efficient
with the use of a frequency. So now you can
have a repeater with two different conversations going on and
only one registered frequency pair for your repeater. Okay, Fusion
(18:13):
doesn't do that. Fusion uses digital narrowde primarily, but you
can use VW, which is voice wide, which so your
voice takes up the entire twelve and a half killer
her it's narrowband spectrum. But on regular digital narrow mode
you have half voice and half GPS and data transmissions
which includes your call sign. But the FCC a while
back said no, that's not a valid ID. You still
have to verbally id yourself on system fusion. Do people
(18:37):
do it? I don't know. I don't really care. Okay,
but if you're saying, well, we don't need to do
that anymore because we're transmitting our call sign, that's just
a state that that's a false statement. That is just
absolutely not true. But I understand what you're saying. I
understand what you're saying. I don't necessarily disagree with what
you're saying. Again, I think you took it in a
different direction that I was originally replying to. And okay,
(19:00):
but I would be one hundred percent in favor of
updating DMR somehow, somehow in amateur radio, implementing a new
phase in a DMR where you can use alpha numeric IDs,
and in implementing call signs, I would be totally, totally
fine with that. Again, my original point was, you still
need that call sign in your radio to transmit over
a d Star network or over a wires X network. Okay,
(19:24):
not over a fusion repeater. There's a difference there. Over
the wires X network and over a d Star network,
you still have to have a valid call sign in
your radio. So in DMR you have to have a
valid ID number to transmit over Brand Meister, but on
a sea bridge it doesn't matter. And I've got a
whole video. I've got a talk I created like six
years ago that compares DMR DMR networks and it talks
(19:47):
about the C bridge versus Brandmeister versus DMR plus versus
tgi F versus a couple other things. I mean, I
try to I try to be as opening to my
audience as I can, but I've never liked Brandmeister. I
still don't like it today, and I've got a bunch
of points about why I think Seabridge versus Brandmeister Seabridge
is better. So maybe I'll make an update. Would you
like to see an update to that video? What do
(20:07):
you guys think about this? Do you think the ID
system and quite frankly, I've been I've been in DMR
for about twelve years now, and I've not really ever
heard any grumbling about people not wanting to do DMR
just because of the ID. I've hear a plethra of excuses,
many excuses about why people don't like DMR. Some of
(20:31):
them are valid, some of them not so much. But
I hear a lot of excuses, but I don't remember
ever hearing the ID being a huge issue. So what
do you guys think? Are you not using DMR because
you have to register an ID? Is that your reasoning?
I would like to hear from you. I would like
to hear how many people actually think that put a
comet blow. Thanks for watching today.
Hey, Before we get started, be sure to head over
to ham Radio two dot com forward slash email dash
sign up to join my email list of over nineteen
thousand subscribers, where I like to send emails about upcoming events,
upcoming shopping deals, keep you updated with all the stuff
going on with my videos. Once that list reaches twenty thousand,
(00:21):
I will be doing a giveaway of another HF radio
sign up today and thank you for the support. Some
more updates on DMR, What my thought process is behind DMR,
What I do and don't like about DMR. My original
video titled what is Wrong with DMR hawd a lot
(00:41):
of really good comments. In this video, we're going to
talk about one of those comments that was actually made
on Reddit after the fact, and I shared the video
on Reddit and a couple other things applied to some
other comments. And the original article that was about Brandmeister
not allowing you to create new talk groups anymore is
kind of what spawned this whole thing, and I had
(01:02):
some thoughts on that, so I want to further address
more questions, more thoughts I had. I said in the
first video that was going to make a part two,
and now I'm thinking I probably will make up Part
three at some point in time, but this is part two,
So let's talk about this right now. One thing that
I will say upfront, and I think I misspoke this
(01:24):
in the first video. Okay, I was talking about the
security feature of not Someone was complaining about having to
upload a copy of your license to get a dMRI ID,
and I said, well, that's a security feature so that
nobody can register an ID for you. In that way,
nobody can use your ID. Well, what I meant was
and I think I said it wrong, So apologies for that.
(01:46):
But you have to upload a copy of your license
to radioid dot net to get a dMRI ID, a
seven digit dMRI ID in your call sign name, so
that idea is registered to your call sign. The reason
you have to upload a copy of your license is
that so no one else can register an ID with
your call sign. Now, once that ID is out there,
(02:08):
it's public domain. It's public information. Everyone's going to see
it when you kee up on the DMR network anyway,
So someone could take that ID and enter it into
a radio of theirs and impersonate you the same way
they could do it on a WIRESX network with just
inputting your call sign into their radio the same way
they could do it on a d Star network with
putting your call sign into their radio. So the security
(02:29):
is not preventing someone from using your ID and their radio.
The security is preventing someone from registering a new ID
under your call sign. So I wanted to make that
clear because I think I misspoke or I said that
in the first one, but I said it in a
way that was unclear, So I apologize for that. Well,
this time today, we're going to talk a little bit
(02:49):
more about the DMR ID aspect and how out of
all the digital modes dr DMR is not the only
one that uses IDs instead of call signs. P twenty
five uses IDs instead of call signs. NXDN uses IDs
instead of call signs. Okay, wirez X or a system
fusion wires X and d Star use call signs. And
(03:09):
in my opinion, I think that we should try to
implement a DMR call sign exchange because here's the problem
with Okay, let me, I'm getting ahead of myself. Now,
let me go to this comment, and this is kind
of where it started. This is a repeat of what
we were talking about. DMR is probably the dumbest mode
in HIM radio for the simple fact that every call
sign needs a radio ID assigned for it to work
(03:30):
on any network. First of all, something I did not
mention in the first video is that's an incorrect statement.
It does not need a radio ID to work on
any network. It needs a radio ID to work on
the Brandmeister network. And I gave a couple of points
in my first video about what I didn't like about Brandmeister,
and we're going to talk a little bit more about
that in this video, so keep watching on that. Okay,
(03:53):
I can put any ID into my radio and key
up on a sea bridge network and use it all
day long. There is no ID authentication parameter built into
a c bridge. It's built into Brandmeister. I don't know
if it's built into TGIF. If someone's familiar enough with
TGIF to acknowledge that to put a comment blow, I'd
(04:13):
love to hear the thoughts on that. I would not
be surprised if it is built into TGIF, but I'm
not sure. I'm not sure. I didn't look that up,
so I didn't research that before this recording. But this
is actually required for Brand Meister. And again laid out
a couple of points why I don't like brandmeister in
the first video, and I'm gonna do more of that
coming up, so let's go. My original reply to that was,
(04:36):
every digital mode needs this. D Starr and y sef
use a call sign. DMR uses a number. If you
fail to enter any of those into your radio, you
won't be able to transmit on a network. I don't
see how DMR is any more complicated in others just
because it uses a number rather than your call sign.
That was my original reply, and today's video is going
to sponsor. It's going to focus mostly on this reply
from Zach lab. Now you can see this was twenty
(04:58):
five days ago between that video. In the time, I've
traded some emails with this gentleman. Well, I didn't trade
emails with him, but we've gone back and forth in
here a little bit. I went to Orlando for a
whole week for himcashon and I've been busy with other stuff.
So but I know I wanted to make a video
about this reply here. So he says, Jason, I'm jumping
in from your video. I was also an amateur and
DMR when it first was budding, sometime around twenty twenty ten.
(05:21):
I'm believe I had an XPR eighty three hundred even
before DMR mark came into existence. When we all did
was local IP site connect and Ravennet systems hadn't even
made the sea bridge. Okay, yeah, so that's that's kind
of how the system in Texas started. Also, I wasn't
part of it back then, but I did some research
a few years back, because I did a video at
the Tapper conference five or six years ago, calling and
(05:44):
I called it Understanding DMR Networks. So yes, I'm familiar
with IP site Connect. I know a couple guys who
still use it, so yeah, good to know there. I
used to be one of the few with a three
to five digit DMR mark ID because I wanted to
use radios on both Connect Plus and HAM Radio. We
had some guys like that in our area as well.
I think the point being made, and the point I
(06:04):
would make myself, is that we're not just adding an
extra step and getting on the air. It's that we're
relying on a third party, a closed one that has
no governance or transparency to handle IDs for everybody. Okay,
I take a little bit issue with that, but let's
keep reading amateur specific modes use call signs exclusively as
a now identifier something that has already been issued and
guarantee unique by government entities using their delegated authorities from
(06:26):
the ITU. There's a governing body, people smarter than us
and before our time, that set a call sign fixes
in stone. It delegates prefixes to countries to let them
use with subfixes they saw fit. With dMRI IDs, it's
an extra step of another database registration. Worse yet, we're
letting a private group of individuals control the hobby internationally
for the rest of us with no accountability. I don't
(06:46):
think DMR is more complated than the other modes because
of this extra registration step, but on the reason of private,
unchecked control alone, I agree with the original poster that
DMR and amateur radio is dumb. Okay, couple of things
on that number one, first and foremost, Okay, welcome to
the planet. Okay, everything in the world works this way.
(07:07):
If someone creates something, or invents something, or discovers something,
or brings an aspect of this topic into a new group,
they set up a new way to do this, and
the control aspects and the preferences and the parameters by
which people use the system is set up by the
original founders or original implementers of that system. I mean,
(07:31):
I understand what you're saying. Okay, I get what you're saying,
But I why is that an issue? Okay? Why is
that an issue? Those guys DMR mark was the first
to create an assigned registration of IDs in DMR and
amateur radio, and I wish and it's kind of a
stupid thing. You have to understand that DMR was not
(07:52):
originally designed to use it the way we use it
in amateur radio. It was a design for close quarters use.
The guys ATMAR never really intended it to have like
nationwide and worldwide talk groups. They never really intended to
key up repeaters across such a large area. They intended
it to be used in buildings maybe, and by companies
or schools all within a certain city or county or state,
(08:15):
and you could kind of link everyone together with talk groups,
and you know, you had maybe a dozen talk groups.
I mean, we have thousands of talk groups in DMR
in amateur radio, and I dare say most of them
don't get used. But the point is that this number
registration was it was obvious that when they implemented this
number registration, it was never meant to assign those numbers
(08:36):
to thousands of people, to hundreds of thousands of people.
It was meant for a more of a close quarters
communications system. So I would love to see an upgradeed
DMR to where it implements alpha numeric numbers instead of
just numeric numbers. Because as of right now, we basically,
since your repeater IDs and your talk group IDs are
(08:56):
only up to six digits, okay, basically, you only have
one hundred thousand and six digit IDs that can exist. Okay,
So from zero zero zero zero zero through nine nine nine,
that's one hundred thousand different IDs. So and all repeater
IDs are six digits, so you've only got six You've
only got one hundred thousand of those that can exist
(09:17):
in the world. Even more stringent than that is, all
of the repeaters in the United States, maybe in North
America start with a three to one, so that limits
it even more. Okay, so you're gonna run out of
IDs and talk group numbers at a certain point in
time because guess what, there's just a limited system. If
we had alpha numeric we could combat that issue, and
we could assign call signs, which are already alphanumeric. Case
(09:40):
five HWB is an alpha numeric call sign, and we
could implement that, and we could start naming. We could
start putting IDs or call signs into radios, We could
start putting call signs into repeaters and in the different
parameters and everything like that. So I would be one
hundred percent in favor of something like that. But the
original point mentioned see this, This is zach Labs guy.
(10:01):
He's getting off in a little bit of a tangent here,
and it's not that I really disagree with what he's saying,
But the original point was that the original poster made
DMR's ID because you have to use a number or
you get blocked in the network. Well, first of all,
as I said a minute ago, that's not actually true.
That's only true on Brandmeister. I can input a number
and use it on seabridge all day long. I can
(10:22):
input the number one two, three foot five and use
it on seabridge all day long. There's nothing on the
sea bridge that blocks unregistered numbers. Because the sea bridge
is not tied physically or virtually to RADIOID dot net
at all. I can take I can do a data
dump from radioid dot net and load it into my
sea bridge, or I can just delete everything out of
(10:44):
my sea bridge as far as radio IDs go, and
people can use it with whatever radios or whatever ID
they have. Okay, there's nothing on a sea bridge that
limits that. Brandmeister limits it. But again, in the first video,
I talked about several things I didn't like about Brandmeister,
and I'm gonna e on that in later video. So
again I see where you're coming from, but you're you're
kind of you're taking it in a different direction than
(11:06):
what the original comment said and what I was replying
to with that video. He goes on to say, down
here he gives a brief history which I already knew all
this stuff about how DMR mark came into existence. They
had dci K four, USD Turbo six NorCal NJ Turbo
n E D E c N. I wasn't familiar with that,
(11:27):
and that one following right behind us would tell their
areas to use the same IDs from DMR Mark. DMR
Mark m a RC is the Motorola Amateure Radio Club.
Motorola likes to tell you they invented DMR they didn't.
They were one of the early adopters of DMR, and
they added IP site connect to the repeaters, which is
kind of like an addition to the layer of DMR,
(11:47):
But they didn't invent DMR. DMR is an open standard
developed by European Telecommunications in two thousand and five. I
think it was Motorola was an early adopter of DMR,
but they didn't invent it. So he goes on here
to talk about how the history of the DMR mark
IDs was used, and then this paragraph right here is interesting.
DMR mark was using usids starting with the elevens instead of
(12:08):
thirty one's. Was also about the time GDPR came into play.
That's when Brandmeister made his fuss, made a fuss about both. Eventually,
in twenty twenty, DMR mark CCS seven let Brandmeister take over,
and I think he's talk about Radio ID. Yeah, take
over and have their way with RADIOID dot net. But
it's the same problem again. Brandmeister is controlled by Select
FOREW who ran Fast Forwards. No real governess, no transparency,
(12:29):
another private group of individuals controlling to hobby internationally. Why
would you jump from a leaking ship right onto another
one that's going to take the same water again in
the future. Okay, well, my first video once again was
about how I didn't like brandmeister. So I don't know
who you're arguing with right here, but I mean, I
see what you're saying. I do disagree with you, but
(12:51):
that's you're not arguing a point that I made. Okay,
another thing he says up here, there was never any
governance or transparency, just a good old boys club who
took all the chairs because they got to the party first. Again,
I must state, welcome to the planet. That's how everything works.
Everything in the history of the world works that way,
whether it's good, bad, right or wrong. I'm not saying
I'm just saying that's how it works. The people who
get their first set up parameters, and everybody else uses
(13:12):
that parameter until someone else comes along and says we
should update this and change it, which I would be
one hundred percent in favor of. I have no problem
with that. But the but the fact of registering a
dmr ID and using it in your radio to get
onto a network is not It's not a hard and
complicated process. It's not really a good old boys network
because guess what anyone can read. All you have to
(13:33):
do is have a valid amateur radio call sign and
upload a copyer license, which again I think you should
already have. I made that point in the first video,
so I'm not gonna make it again. Okay, I think
you are should already. I think everyone should have a
copy of their amateur radio license and have it displayed
in their hamshack or the vehicle, or one in your pocket. Okay,
So again I'm not going to go into that again.
(13:55):
But that is I don't understand why it's so difficult
to use an ID instead of a call sign. So
he goes on to talk about p twenty five here
in a minute, and I want to read a couple
of the things he says there. Again, I don't really
I'm not really arguing with this person, this zach Labs person, don't.
I don't think he's wrong, He's just taken it in
a different direction than what I was originally talking about. First,
(14:17):
let me tell you about today's sponsor. Once again, we're
sponsoring light Me earbuds. These are these over the ear earbuds.
They sent me a new set called a Cozy Fit
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They have open ear noise reduction of reducing noise by
negative fifteen dB. They're lightweight and comfortable. I've been wearing
(14:38):
them during this whole video. They're about zero point two
to three ounces each. I've been wearing them during this
whole video. I can I cannot even tell they're there.
I can see him in the camera, but I can't.
I can't even really tell her there. They have advanced
Bluetooth five Dot four delivers excellent audio quality, and they
are IP x four splash proof rated, so that sweat
or a little bit of rain gets on him. It's
(14:58):
not gonna be a big deal again. I said in
the first video that they sponsored that had I had
some inner earbuds I've used for a long time, and
I still have those. Sometimes I listen to those earbuds.
I listen to YouTube or something when I'm in the
deer stand. I want to try to be quiet. But
after they've been in your ear for two or three hours,
you know, they kind of start to hurt a little bit.
You have to take them out. These sit on top
of the ear. I can hear them right now. They
(15:20):
sound great, and they work really well. So check out
the link of the description low from light me l
a l YTMI for the Cozy Fit G one version
of their earbuds. Thank you like me for sponsoring this
video right here. Basically his last kind of thought process
here was I don't use DMR anymore if I can
help it. When I do, it's usually for a public
(15:40):
service event. We're use local repeaters directly linked to each
other with iPSC or similar no bridges involved. I use
an ID issued by non amsure system, not even a
less than FIVEG it issued by DMR, Mark Brandmeister. Brandmeister
does an issue id's you talk about radioid dot net
and Glenn at radioid dot net doesn't have anything to
do with Brandmeister directly, although Brandmeister does limit the people
(16:03):
that can use their network. But again, get me started
on how much I don't like Brandmeister. Okay, so you
don't have that problem with the sea bridge. Now, this
right here is a little bit I don't want to
call I don't want to say hypocritical, but I think
it kind of shoots yourself in the foot right here.
I still use P twenty five to this day, before
the XDS clone amateurs used to use whatever numeric ID
for amateur radio since Astros P twenty five supported Astroid's
(16:26):
soft id's around the same time. Do you mark mente existence.
I've been using that to transmit call sign over the air,
which not only solves ID but also means the numeric
ID doesn't even matter anymore. So you can totally do
that over a sea bridge. Now you're probably gonna get
people coming back to you and say, dude, your id's
not right, just like I made a video a while
back about calling a QRZ on a PODA and never
ID properly. So that's gonna be a thing if you
(16:48):
don't use a proper ID. But the point is that
you're not blocked by a sea bridge if you use
a five digit connect plus ID or just some made
up random number. The C bridge does not block you.
Brandmeister blocks you, but not the seed bridge. Okay, he says,
I never really use d star a fusion, But DMR
remains the only amateur LMR mode where you can transmit
(17:09):
an Alphameric where you can't transmit an Alpha America ID
for a call sign alongside with your voice calls. That's
the reason on top of privately controlled numbering makes me
feel d MAR is not well suited for the amateur
radio to begin with. Okay, you know what, I don't
agree with you, but I understand what you're saying. I
understand what you're saying there. That's fine. Somewhere else in
this article, somewhere, this is the same article I had
(17:29):
in the last video. Somewhere else in this article, someone mentioned, well,
since you're transmitting your call sign on system Fusion and
d STAR, you don't have to ID. That's not true.
That's not true. When digital voice modes first came around,
it was and especially Fusion, because Fusion is twelve and
a half killer hurts and if you use digital narrow
DN mode, then it puts it splits it into two
(17:51):
six point twenty five killer hertz channels, and it uses
voice for one of those channels, and it transmits your
GPS and call sign on the second channel. Okay, DMR
uses voice for bow channels. That's why it's more efficient
with the use of a frequency. So now you can
have a repeater with two different conversations going on and
only one registered frequency pair for your repeater. Okay, Fusion
(18:13):
doesn't do that. Fusion uses digital narrowde primarily, but you
can use VW, which is voice wide, which so your
voice takes up the entire twelve and a half killer
her it's narrowband spectrum. But on regular digital narrow mode
you have half voice and half GPS and data transmissions
which includes your call sign. But the FCC a while
back said no, that's not a valid ID. You still
have to verbally id yourself on system fusion. Do people
(18:37):
do it? I don't know. I don't really care. Okay,
but if you're saying, well, we don't need to do
that anymore because we're transmitting our call sign, that's just
a state that that's a false statement. That is just
absolutely not true. But I understand what you're saying. I
understand what you're saying. I don't necessarily disagree with what
you're saying. Again, I think you took it in a
different direction that I was originally replying to. And okay,
(19:00):
but I would be one hundred percent in favor of
updating DMR somehow, somehow in amateur radio, implementing a new
phase in a DMR where you can use alpha numeric IDs,
and in implementing call signs, I would be totally, totally
fine with that. Again, my original point was, you still
need that call sign in your radio to transmit over
a d Star network or over a wires X network. Okay,
(19:24):
not over a fusion repeater. There's a difference there. Over
the wires X network and over a d Star network,
you still have to have a valid call sign in
your radio. So in DMR you have to have a
valid ID number to transmit over Brand Meister, but on
a sea bridge it doesn't matter. And I've got a
whole video. I've got a talk I created like six
years ago that compares DMR DMR networks and it talks
(19:47):
about the C bridge versus Brandmeister versus DMR plus versus
tgi F versus a couple other things. I mean, I
try to I try to be as opening to my
audience as I can, but I've never liked Brandmeister. I
still don't like it today, and I've got a bunch
of points about why I think Seabridge versus Brandmeister Seabridge
is better. So maybe I'll make an update. Would you
like to see an update to that video? What do
(20:07):
you guys think about this? Do you think the ID
system and quite frankly, I've been I've been in DMR
for about twelve years now, and I've not really ever
heard any grumbling about people not wanting to do DMR
just because of the ID. I've hear a plethra of excuses,
many excuses about why people don't like DMR. Some of
(20:31):
them are valid, some of them not so much. But
I hear a lot of excuses, but I don't remember
ever hearing the ID being a huge issue. So what
do you guys think? Are you not using DMR because
you have to register an ID? Is that your reasoning?
I would like to hear from you. I would like
to hear how many people actually think that put a
comet blow. Thanks for watching today.
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